hand--closed my lips rather abruptly. But I was used to this sort of
sledge-hammer form of argument.

'Oh, it is all very fine for you to sit there and moralise, Ursula, like
a sort of sucking Diogenes,' grumbled Jill, 'when you know you are going
to have your own way and live a deliciously sort of three-volume-novel
life, not like any one else's, unless it were Don Quixote, or one of the
Knights of the Round Table, poking about among a lot of strange people,
doing wonderful things for them, until they are all ready to worship you.
It is all very well for you, I say; but what would you do if you were
me?' cried Jill, in her shrill treble, and quite oblivious of grammatical
niceties; 'how would you like to be poor me, shut up here with that old
dragon?'

This was a grand opportunity for airing my philosophy, and I rushed at
it. To Jill's amazement, I shook my hair back in the way she usually
shook her rough black mane, and, opening my eyes very widely, tried to
copy Jill's falsetto.

'How thankful I am Jocelyn Garston and not Ursula Garston,' I said,
with rapid staccato. 'Poor Ursula! I am fond of her, but I would not
change places with her for the world. She has known such a lot of trouble
in her life, more than most girls, I believe; she has lost her lovely
home,--such a sweet old place,--and her mother and father and Charlie,
all her nearest and her most beloved, and she is so sad that she wants
to work hard and forget her troubles.'

'Oh dear!' sighed Jill at this.

'How happy I am compared with her!' I went on, relapsing unconsciously