Part 13 (2/2)
Alex was not particularly curious, but she had been the nursery autocrat too long to be able to endure resistance to her command.
”Tell me at once, Barbara.”
”No, I won't.”
”Yes, you will. Well, what is it about?” said Alex, changing her tactics.
”It's about Cedric.”
”Is he in a sc.r.a.pe?”
”No, it's just something he did.”
”_What?_ Did he tell you about it?”
”Oh, no. He doesn't know I know. He'd be furious if he did, I expect.”
”Who told you? Does any one else know?”
”n.o.body told me. One other person knows,” giggled Barbara, jumping up and down in her petticoat.
”Keep still, you'll have the candle over. Who's the other person who knows?”
”Guess.”
”Oh, I can't; don't be so silly. I am not going to ask you any more.”
”Well,” said Barbara in a great hurry, ”it's Marie Munroe, then; it's about her.”
”What about her? She didn't take any notice of any one except Cedric, and I think it was very rude and stupid of her.”
”It was Cedric's doing much more than hers,” Barbara said shrewdly. ”I think he thinks he is in love with her. I saw them in the shrubbery when we were playing hide-and-seek; and--what do you think, Alex?”
”Well, what?”
”Cedric kissed her--I saw him.”
”Then,” said Alex, ”it was perfectly hateful of him and of Marie and of you.”
”Why of _me?_” shrieked Barbara in a high key of indignation. ”What have I done, I should like to know?”
”You'd no business to say anything about it. Put out the candle, Barbara, I'm going to get into bed.”
In the darkness Alex lay with her mind in a tumult. It seemed to her incredible that her brother, whom she had always supposed to despise every form of sentimentality, as he did any display of feeling on the part of his family, should have wanted to kiss little, red-haired Marie, whom he had only known for one day, and who was by far the least pretty of any of the three Munroe sisters. ”And to kiss her in the shrubbery like that!”
Alex felt disgusted and indignant. She thought about it for a long while before she went to sleep, although she would gladly have dismissed the incident from her mind. Most of all, perhaps, she was filled with astonishment. Why should any one want to kiss Marie Munroe?
In the depths of her heart was another wonder which she never formulated even to herself, and of which she would, for very shame, have strenuously denied the existence.
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