Betty looked as though she meant to cry.

"Well, I never," said Mrs. Leighton. "You must take your turn. You don't come wherever your father and I go, or Cuthbert. You know you don't."

"I think that Cuthbert might occasionally take us, however," said Jean.

"We all went to the flower show last year," wailed Elma.

"Yes, with the parasols papa brought us from London," said Betty. "And Mabel said it was like carrying four ba.s.sinettes in a row, and snapped hers down and wouldn't put it up till she got separated from us."

"She was growing up even then," said Jean in a melancholy manner.

"Come, come, girls," interrupted Mrs. Leighton. "You may be just the same when you grow up. I won't allow you to be down on poor Mabel.

Especially when she isn't here to speak for herself."

"When we grow up there will always be one less to tyrannize over," said Jean. "Honestly, mother, I never would have thought that Mabel could be so priggish. Do you know why she wouldn't have us? I'm too big and gawky, and Elma is always saying silly things, and Betty is just a baby.

There you are."

"Well, it isn't very nice of Mabel, but you mustn't believe she means that," said Mrs. Leighton. "And after all, Mabel must have her little day. She was very good, let me tell you, very sweet and nice when you were babies and she just a little thing. She nursed you, Elma and Betty, often and often, and put you to sleep when your own nurse couldn't, and she has looked after you all more or less ever since. You might let her grow up without being worried."

"It's hateful to be called a nuisance," said Jean, somewhat mollified.

"Why do you waste time over it, I wonder," said Mrs. Leighton. "Instead of moping Jean might be golfing, and Elma and Betty having tea at Miss Annie's; with n.o.body at all being nice to your poor old mother."

It dawned on them how selfish they might all be.

"Oh, mummy," cried three reproachful voices.

"Well, Elma likes Miss Grace much better than she does me, and Betty likes her rabbits, and Jean despises me because I don't play golf. I lead a very lonely life," said Mrs. Leighton.

"Oh, mummy!"

"My idea, when I came into your room," said Mrs. Leighton, "was to propose that we might walk into town and get Jean's new hat, and take tea at Crowther's, and drive home if my poor old leg won't hold out for walking both ways. But we've wasted so much time in talking about Mabel----"

"Oh, mummy--Your bonnet, your veil, and your gloves, and do be quick, mummy," cried Elma. "We're very sorry about Mabel."

They flew in self-reproachful manner to getting her off to her room and making their own things fly.

"After all, we are a beastly set of prigs," called out Jean to Elma.

"And I think I ought to have a biscuit-coloured straw, don't you?"

It was one of a series of encounters with which the new tactics of Mabel invaded the family. Mrs. Leighton's gentle rule was sorely tried for quite a long time in this way. Although she reasoned with the younger girls on the side of Mabel, she took Mabel severely to task for her behaviour over the flower show.

"It wasn't nice of you," she told her, "to cut off any little invitation for your sisters. You must not begin by being selfish, you know. There are few enough things happening here not to spread the opportunities.

Jean wouldn't have troubled you. She may be at the gawky stage, but she makes plenty of friends."

Mrs. Leighton could be very impartial in her judgments.

But Mabel was hurt. She preserved a superior air, which became extremely annoying to the girls.

The greatest crime that she committed was when Jean, amiably engaging her in conversation in the old way, asked, "And how was Adelaide Maud dressed?"

Mabel turned in a very studied manner and stared past Jean and every one.

"I don't think I observed Adelaide Maud," she said.

This was more than human beings could stand.

"I think it's most ir--ir----"

"Oh, find the word first and talk afterwards," said Mabel grandly. "You kids get on one's nerves."

"Kids--nerves," cried Jean faintly. "I think Mabel is taking brain fever."

Elma left the room abruptly, much on the verge of tears, and she tried to find solace in her dictionary. The word was "irrelevant"--yet did not seem to fit the occasion at all. What would Miss Annie or Miss Grace do, if a sister had turned old and strange in a few days like that?

What would mother have done? Mother's sisters always complimented each other when they met. They never quarrelled. Of course they never could have quarrelled. "Forgive and forget," Aunt Katharine once had said had always been their motto. Forgiving seemed very easy--but forgetting with Adelaide Maud in the question--what an impossibility! Miss Annie had an axiom that when you felt worried about one matter the correct thing to do was to think about another. Elma thought and thought, but everything worked round to the traitorous remark of Mabel's about Adelaide Maud.

It seemed as though her head could hold nothing else but that one idea about Adelaide Maud, until suddenly it dawned on her that it was really rather fine and grand of Mabel that she should talk in this negligent manner of any one so magnificent. This reflection gave her the greatest possible comfort. To be condescending, even in a mere frame of mind, to the Story Book Girls seemed like the swineherd becoming a prince. Elma began to think how jolly it would be to hear Mabel saying, "You know, my dear Helen, I don't think you ought to wear heliotrope, it hardly suits you." There was something very delicious in having Mabel starchy and proud after all. Elma heard her coming upstairs to her bedroom to dress for dinner just then. The fall of the footsteps seemed to suggest that some of the starchiness had departed from Mabel. Much of the quality of sympathy which had produced such a person as Miss Grace, was to be found in Elma. Jean and Betty had hardened their two little hearts to the consistency of flint over the behaviour of Mabel, but the mere fact that Elma thought her footsteps seemed to flag and become tired roused her to chivalrous eagerness towards making it up. She went into Mabel's room and sat on the window seat. It was a long, low, pleasant couch let into a wide window looking on the lawn and gardens at the front of the house.

The sun poured in on Elma, who forgot the habits of upright behaviour which she exhibited at Miss Annie's, and sprawled there with her fingers on the cord of the blind.

Mabel drew her hatpins out of fair braids in an admiring yet disconsolate manner. She took a hand gla.s.s and had first a side view, then a back view of the new effect, patted little stray locks into place, and ruffled out others.

"What's up, Mabs? You don't look en--thusiastic," asked Elma.

"It's papa. After my lovely day too. He wants me to play that Mozart thing with Betty to-night. Mozart and Betty! Isn't it stale? I hate Mozart, and I hate drumming away at silly things with Betty." A very discontented sigh accompanied these remarks.

"I really don't see why I should always be tacked on to Betty or to Jean or you. I haven't a minute to myself."

"Oh, Mabs, you've had a lovely day!"

The words broke out in an accusing manner. Elma had certainly intended to comfort Mabel, yet immediately began by expostulating with her.

Mabel turned round, with her seventeenth birthday present, a fine silver-backed brush, in her hand.

"_Have_ I had a lovely day, have I?" she asked. "I've had simply nothing of the kind. Jean went on so about not going that Cousin Harry seemed to think I had injured her. He made me feel like a criminal all afternoon. These navy men like lots of girls round them. One or two more don't make the difference to them that it makes to us. At least it's a different kind of difference. A nice one. I think it was abominable of him. My first chance--and to spoil it, all because of Jean! It wasn't fair of her."

Elma began to feel her reason rocking with the sudden justice of this new argument.

"A minute ago, I thought it wasn't fair of you," she said reflectively.

"I can see it will be awfully hard to get us all peacefully grown up.

Betty will have the best of it. I shall simply give in to her right along the line. I can see that. I really couldn't stand the worry of it."

"I suppose you wouldn't have gone to the flower show without Jean?"

asked Mabel in rather a scornful way.

"Good gracious, no," said Elma simply. "I should have presented her with the one and only ticket, just for the sake of peace."

"That's a rotten, weak way to behave," said Mabel, with a touch of Cuthbert's best manner.

"I know. I don't mean that you should have given her the ticket. You weren't made to be bullied. I was. I feel it in my bones every time any one is horrid to me."