when Rupert was "out" with me because of the Weston affair, I was
"particular friends" with Henrietta. I did not exactly give her up
when Rupert and I were all right again, but when she complained one
day (I think _she_ was jealous too!) I said, "I'm particular friends
with you _as a sister_ still; but you know Rupert and I are both
boys."

I did love Rupert very dearly, and I would have given up anything and
everything to serve him and wait upon him now that he was laid up; but
I would rather have had him all to myself, whereas Henrietta was now
his particular friend. It is because I know how meanly I felt about it
that I should like to say how good she was. My Mother was very
delicate, and she had a horror of accidents; but Henrietta stood at
Mr. Bustard's elbow all the time he was examining Rupert's knee, and
after that she always did the fomentations and things. At first Rupert
said she hurt him, and would have Nurse to do it; but Nurse hurt him
so much more, that then he would not let anybody but Henrietta touch
it. And he never called her Monkey now, and I could see how she tried
to please him. One day she came down to breakfast with her hair all
done up in the way that was in fashion then, like a grown-up young
lady, and I think Rupert was pleased, though she looked rather funny
and very red. And so Henrietta nursed him altogether, and used to read
battles to him as he lay on the sofa, and Rupert made plans of the
battles on cardboard, and moved bits of pith out of the elder-tree
about for the troops, and showed Henrietta how if he had had the
moving of them really, and had done it quite differently to the way
the generals did, the other side would have won instead of being
beaten.

And Mother used to say, "That's just the way your poor father used to