One day it came to an open quarrel between them.
They were lying on the beach after bathing, trying to protect their bare and blistered legs from the sandflies. Laura, flat on her back, had spread a towel over hers; Pin sat Turk-fashion with her legs beneath her and fought the flies with her hands. Having vainly endeavoured to draw from the reticent Laura some of those school-tales of which, in former holidays, she had been so prodigal, Pin was now chattering to her heart’s content, about the small doings of home. Laura listened to her with the impatient toleration of one who has seen the world: she really could not be expected to interest herself in such trifles; and she laughed in her sleeve at Pin’s simpleness. When, however, her little sister began to enlarge anew on some wonderful orders Mother had lately had, she could not refrain from saying crossly: “You’ve told me that a dozen times already. And you needn’t bawl it out for everyone to hear.”
“Oh, Laura! there isn’t anyone anywhere near us … and even if there were—why, I thought you’d be so pleased. Mother’s going to give you an extra shilling pocket-money, ’cause of it.”
“Of course I’m pleased. Don’t be so silly, Pin.”
“I’m not always silly, Laura,” protested Pin. “And I don’t believe you are glad, a bit. Old Anne was, though. She said: ‘Bless her dear heart!’ ”
“Old Anne? Well, I just wonder what next! It’s none of her dashed business.”
“Oh, Laura!” began Pin, growing tearful both at words and tone. “Why, Laura, you’re not ashamed of it, are you?—that mother does sewing?”—and Pin opened her lobelia-blue eyes to their widest, showing what very big eyes they would be, were they not so often swollen with crying.
“Of course not,” said Laura tartly. “But I’m blessed if I can see what it’s got to do with old Anne.”
“But she asked me … what mother was working at—and if she’d got any new customers. She just loves mother.”
“Like her cheek!” snapped Laura. “Poking her ugly old nose into what doesn’t concern her. You should just have said you didn’t know.”
“But that would have been a story, Laura!” cried Pin, horrified, “I did know—quite well.”
“Goodness gracious, Pin, you—”
“I’ve never told a story in my life,” said Pin hotly. “And I’m not going to either, for you or anyone. I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“Hold your silly tongue!”
“I shan’t, Laura. And I think you’re very wicked. You’re not a bit like what you used to be. And it’s all going to school that’s done it—Mother says it is.”
“Oh, don’t be such a blooming ass!” and Laura, stung to the quick, retaliated by taunting Pin with the change that had come to pass in her appearance. To her surprise, she found Pin grown inordinately touchy about her looks: at Laura’s brutal statement of the truth she cried bitterly.
“I’m not, no, I’m not! I haven’t got a full moon for a face! It’s no fatter than yours. Sarah said last time you were home how fat you were getting.”
“I’m sure I’m not,” said Laura, indignant in her turn.
“Yes, you are,” sobbed Pin. “But you only think other people are ugly, not yourself. I’ll tell mother what you’ve said as soon as ever I get home. And I’ll tell her, too, you want to make me tell stories. And that I’m sure you’ve done something naughty at school, ’cause you won’t ever talk about it. And how you’re always saying bad words like blooming and gosh and golly—yes, I will!”
“You were always a sneak and a telltale.”
“And you were always a greedy, selfish, deceitful thing.”
“You don’t know anything about me, you numbskull, you!”
“I don’t want to! I know you’re a bad, wicked girl.”
After this exchange of home truths, they did not speak to each other for two days: Pin had a temper that smouldered, and could not easily forgive. So she stayed at old Anne’s side, helping to bake scones and leatherjackets; or trotted after the boys, who had dropped into the way of saying: “Come on, little Pin!” as they never said: “Come on, Laura!” and Laura retired in lonely dudgeon to the beach.
She took the estrangement so much to heart that she eased her feelings by abusing Pin in thought; Pin was a pigheaded little ignoramus, as timid as ever of setting one foot before the other. And the rest of them would be just the same—old stick-in-the muds, unchanged by a hair, or, if they had changed, then changed for the worse. Laura had somehow never foreseen the day on which she would find herself out of tune with her home circle; with unthinking assurance she had expected that Pin, for instance, would always be eager to keep pace with her. Now, she saw that her little sister would probably never catch up to her again. Such progress as Pin might make—if she were not already glued firm to her silly notions—would be in quite another direction. For the quarrel had made one thing plain to Laura: with regard to her troubles, she need not look to Pin for sympathy: if Pin talked such gibberish at the hint of putting off an inquisitive old woman, what would she—and not she alone—what would they all say to the tissue of lies Laura had spun round Mr. Shepherd, a holy man, a clergyman, and a personal friend of Mother’s into the bargain? She could not blink the fact that, did it come to their ears, they would call her in earnest, what Pin had called her in her temper—bad and wicked. Home was, alas! no longer the snug nest in which she was safe from the slings and shanghais of the world.
And then there was another thing: did she stay at home, she would
