E. Nesbit

“ Doris said, “how people can be so nasty. Madame always told me to put in my prayers for me to grow up good. They haven’t grown up good; and they’ve been growing up for hundreds of years, I expect. Oh, they are nasty, nasty!”
The two were alone, for a wonder. Cousin Simpshall and Aunt Emily had gone out with Uncle Harold in the pony carriage, for there had come to be a weak-springed clattering realisation of the uncle’s old dream. And Cousin Jane never worried. ”

“ Daphne was picking up gold beads on a needle threaded with yellow silk. Uncle Harold was concealing his slumber with a newspaper, Aunt Emily with red and blue wool and a bone hook was crocheting something for a bazaar; Cousin Jane was marking the new pillow-cases, and Cousin Henrietta was frankly asleep opposite Uncle Harold. A domestic interior full of peace and the calm of the really-respectable. ”

“ Her father——!
“Thank you—yes—it is lovely,” said Daphne, receiving the diamond heart from Cousin Jane’s anxious knotted, fingers. “I’m so glad we found it.”
“Now I’m not a guilty outcast, am I?” Doris demanded joyfully. “I’m just a poor little Dormouse that went and forgot.”
It is, of course, pleasant to possess a diamond star and the slavish devotion of a distant friend, but it does not compensate for the daily drab of a suburban frame, not made or measured for the picture that has to fill it. The life was detestable. ”

“ In this choking atmosphere the sisters clung to each other like children passing through a haunted wood at night. They seemed to themselves to be, in this dull world of conventional commonplace, the only living things—the only real people. ”

“ Doris broke a saucer the other day, and I said Helianthemum and the Veale aunt heard. There was a lecture a mile long about profane language. She wouldn’t believe it was in the seed list. And it wasn’t—in hers. I am learning to say ‘dear me!’ and ‘well I never!’ and ‘gracious,’ which I think is much nearer swearing than any of the flower names. It’s all choky, choky, choky. How is a girl to live her own life here, I should like to know. There’s no life of any sort. Your own or anyone else’s. I wish. I could go back to you—or else go and live’ in Bloomsbury. ”

“ And then the tray started off, like the pony does when Uncle Harold is so cruel with the whip, but I hadn’t hit it once—and the scales hit my elbow, and the floor hit my head, but I just held on and I never screamed, did I? ”

“ And I’d like this blue velvet to make her a suit for when I pretend she was twins and it’s César Adolphe’s turn.”
“I can’t give you the blue,” said Cousin Jane. “It was part of a tuck cut on the bias that your Aunt Emily had with a grey cashmere. But the pink and white is mine—I don’t know how it got in here. It was a dress I wore at a party we went to with your father, Daphne. He said I was like a convolvulus flower. But, of course, that was just his notion. We wore camellias in our hair at that time. Every nice girl used to wear camellias. ”

“ I dare not think of tomorrow. What will school be without its queen? Good-bye, Queen Daphne. A tantôt! When I leave school! Then ‘look out for larks!’ I wonder whether your father’ll read Dickens aloud to you in the evenings. That’s what they do in England, in books. With the ‘red curtains drawn, and the dancing firelight and the softly shaded lamp.’ I do envy you your beautiful home-life that you’re going to! And your father so proud of you, and you so devoted to him. I know you. You’ll be an angel of a daughter.
“Yours indescribably,⁠
“Colombe. ”

“ You can buy quite a long candle for a penny, and you can write very fast if you contract the habit of composing your letters under the rain of small-talk in the household sitting-room. It can be done quite easily and without detection as soon as you have learned to recognise the voice inflection of the small-talkers. ”