Sisters Three

Sisters Three
By Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
CHAPTER ONE.
NEW YEAR'S DAY.
"I wish something would happen!" sighed Norah.
"If it were something nice," corrected Lettice. "Lots of things happen
every day, but they are mostly disagreeable. Getting up, for instance, in
the cold, dark mornings--and practising--and housework, and getting
ready for stupid old classes--I don't complain of having too little to do.
I want to do less, and to be able to amuse myself more."
"We want a change, that is the truth," said Hilary, bending forward on
her seat, and sending the poker into the heart of the fire with a vigorous
shove. "Our lives jog-trot along in the same way year after year, and it
grows monotonous. I declare, when I think that this is the first day of
another January it makes me ill! Fifty-two more Mondays to sit in the
morning-room and darn stockings. Fifty-two Saturdays to give out
stores. Three hundred and sixty-five days to dust ornaments, interview
the cook, and say, `Well, let me see! The cold mutton had better be
used up for lunch'--Oh, dear me!"
"I'll tell you what--let's have a nice long grumble," said Lettice, giving
her chair a hitch nearer the fire, and bending forward with a smile of
enjoyment. "Let's hold an Indignation Meeting on our own account,
and discuss our grievances. Women always have grievances
nowadays--it's the fashionable thing, and I like to be in the fashion.
Three charming and beauteous maidens shut up in the depths of the
country in the very flower of their youth, with nothing to do--I mean
with far too much to do, but with no amusement, no friends, no variety!

We are like the princesses in the fairy tales, shut up in the moated tower;
only then there were always fairy godmothers to come to the rescue,
and beautiful princes in golden chariots. We shall have to wait a long
time before any such visitors come tramping along the Kendal
high-road. I am sure it sounds melancholy enough to make anyone
sorry for us!"
"Father is the dearest man in the world, but he doesn't understand how
a girl of seventeen feels. I was seventeen on my last birthday, so it's
worse for me than for you, for I am really grown-up." Hilary sighed,
and rested her sleek little head upon her hand in a pensive, elderly
fashion. "I believe he thinks that if we have a comfortable home and
enough to eat, and moderately decent clothes, we ought to be content;
but I want ever so much more than that. If mother had lived--"
There was a short silence, and then Norah took up the strain in her crisp,
decided accents. "I am fifteen and a half, and I look very nearly as old
as you do, Hilary, and I'm an inch taller. I don't see why I need go on
with these stupid old classes. If I could go to a good school, it would be
another thing, for I simply adore music and painting, and should love to
work hard, and become celebrated; but I don't believe Miss Briggs can
teach me any more than I know myself, and there is no better teacher
for miles around. If father would only let me go abroad for a year; but
he is afraid of trusting me out of his sight. If I had seven children, I'd be
glad to get rid of some of them, if only to get a little peace and
quietness at home."
"Mother liked the idea of girls being educated at home, that is the
reason why father objects to sending us away. The boys must go to
boarding-schools, of course, because there is no one here who can take
them in hand. As for peace and quietness, father enjoys having the
house full. He grumbles at the noise sometimes, but I believe he likes it
at the bottom of his heart. If we do happen to be quiet for a change in
the evening, he peers over his book and says, `What is the matter; has
something gone wrong? Why are you all so quiet?' He loves to see us
frisking about."
"Yes, but I can't frisk any longer--I'm too dull--I want something to

happen," repeated Norah, obstinately. "Other people have parties on
New Year's Day, or a Christmas-tree, or crowds of visitors coming to
call. We have been sitting here sewing from ten o'clock this
morning--nasty, uninteresting mending--which isn't half done yet,
though it is nearly four o'clock. And you never think of me! I'm fifteen,
and I feel it more than either of you. You see it is like this. Sometimes I
feel quite young, like a child, and then you two are too proper to run
about and play with me, so