‘It is not her work,’ said Rose, offended, ‘it is my own. Mayn’t I have something now and then that is my own? How many yards, Anne, do you remember, must the pigsty be off the house?’
Anne did not remember this important piece of knowledge. ‘But,’ she said, ‘it is in that book of specifications. It is dry to read, but it is a very good book; you should have it on the table to refer to. You have made the living room too large in comparison with the rest of the house.’
‘Because they are poor,’ said Rose, indignantly. ‘is that to say that they are to have nothing pretty in their lives?’
‘But there must be a good scullery,’ said Anne. She stood with a very grave face behind her sister, looking over her shoulder at the drawings spread out on the table. Whether it was the importance of the scullery, or of the other matters concerning her own happiness which she had in her head, it is certain that Anne’s countenance was very serious. The very tone of her voice proved to those who knew her so well that her mood was graver than usual. At other times the importance of the scullery would have brought a tone of laughter, an accent of fun into her voice; but her gravity was now quite real and unbroken by any lighter sentiment. She was taller than her sister, and of a different order altogether. Anne was rather pale than otherwise, with but a slight evanescent colour now and then; her features good, her face oval, her eyes dark grey, large and lucid, and with long eyelashes curling upwards. But Rose, though she had all that _beauté de diable_ which is the privilege of youth, was, like her mother, round and rosy, though her pretty little face and figure had not the solidity, nor her complexion the set and rigid tone which placid middle age acquires. The one face over the other contrasted pleasantly; the elder serious, as if nothing in heaven or earth could ever make her smile again; the younger bent with momentary gravity and importance over her work. But they had no air of belonging to each other. Nothing but an accident could have linked together two beings so little resembling. The accident was Mr. Mountford, whom neither of them was at all like. They were not Mountfords at all, as everybody in the neighbourhood allowed. They took after their mothers, not the one and indivisible head of the family; but that did not really matter, for these two girls, like their mothers, were no more than accidents in the house.