"I don't know what makes me go on thinking of home," said Cicely, after a pause. "If we had been at home we should have had more pleasure, Mab. The people about would have asked us--a clergyman's daughters always get asked; and there are very nice people about Brentburn, very different from the Robinsons and their class."
"We should have had no dresses to go in," said Mab. "How could we ever have had ball-dresses off papa's two hundred a year?"
"Ball-dresses sound something very grand, but a plain white tarlatan is not dear when one can make it up one's self. However, that is a poor way of looking at it," said Cicely, giving a little toss to her head, as if to throw off such unelevated thoughts. "There are a great many more important things to think of. How will he ever manage to bring up the two boys?"
Mab made a pause of reflection. "To be sure Aunt Jane is not their relation," she said, "and boys are more troublesome than girls. They want to have tutors and things, and to go to the university; and then what is the good of it all if they are not clever? Certainly boys are far more troublesome than girls."
"And then, if you consider papa," said Cicely, "that he is not very strong, and that he is old. One does not like to say anything disagreeable about one's papa, but what _did_ he want with those children? Surely we were quite enough when he is so poor."
"There is always one thing he can do," said Mab. "Everybody says he is a very good scholar. He will have to teach them himself."
"We shall have to teach them," said Cicely with energy; "I know so well that this is what it will come to. I don't mean to teach them ourselves, for it is not much Latin I know, and you none, and I have not a word of Greek--but they will come upon us, I am quite sure."
Cicely gave a slight shrug of her shoulders, but beyond that she did not pursue the subject. Mrs. St. John's name stopped everything; they could not discuss her, nor express their disapprobation, and therefore they forbore religiously, though it was sometimes hard work.
"Blandina will think we are late," at last she said, turning round. This was their name for their former instructress, their present employer. Mab turned dutifully, obeying her sister's touch, but with a faint sigh.