They were both nice girls, accomplished,
well-dressed of course, and well enough looking;
but they had met no one at the seaside or the mountains
whom their taste would allow to influence their fate,
and they had come home to the occupations they had left,
with no hopes and no fears to distract them.
In the absence of these they were fitted to take
the more vivid interest in their brother's affairs,
which they could see weighed upon their mother's mind
after the first hours of greeting.
"Oh, it seems to have been going on, and your father has
never written a word about it," she said, shaking her head.
"What good would it have done?" asked Nanny, who was
little and fair, with rings of light hair that filled
a bonnet-front very prettily; she looked best in a bonnet.
"It would only have worried you. He could not have
stopped Tom; you couldn't, when you came home to do it."
"I dare say papa didn't know much about it," suggested Lily.
She was a tall, lean, dark girl, who looked as if she
were not quite warm enough, and whom you always associated
with wraps of different aesthetic effect after you had
once seen her.
It is a serious matter always to the women of his family
when a young man gives them cause to suspect that he
is interested in some other woman. A son-in-law or
brother-in-law does not enter the family; he need not be
caressed or made anything of; but the son's or brother's
wife has a claim upon his mother and sisters which they
cannot deny.
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