The Daughters of Mrs Peacock by Gerald Bullet

during her childhood but was still Sir Walter. Poor Mr Thackeray’s death was a comparatively recent event: hence the epithet.
    â€˜You cannot include Julia in your strictures, Papa,’ said Sarah. ‘She sets me and Kitty
such
a good example. We can never go wrong if we model our behaviour on hers.’
    â€˜Me?’ said Julia. ‘Oh no.’ She rebutted the charge indignantly, refusing to be excluded from the communion of sisters. ‘I’m sure I’m as silly as either of you. But I have at least one virtue,’ she declared. ‘I never mind being laughed at. Which is just as well,’ she sensibly added, ‘for I get plenty of
that
.’
    â€˜So do we all, my dear,’ said Mrs Peacock, ‘with Sarah and your father about. They encourage each other.’
    â€˜I think
I
shall write a novel for Kitty,’ said Sarah, ‘and see that she reads nothing else. Julia will help me with the pious bits. I shall model it on
Ministering Children.
Or that book about the little motherless girl whose father was in India, and her kind auntie wouldn’t let her openhis letter because it came on Sunday. Do you remember, Mama? Something like that will be wonderfully good for Kitty. It’s just what she needs, poor child, to set her in the right path.’
    â€˜Why must you talk about me as if I were not here?’ Catherine complained. ‘But perhaps you didn’t notice I was? This is me, this beautiful young girl with red hair.’
    â€˜When you two have finished talking nonsense,’ remarked Mrs Peacock, ‘perhaps one of you will spare time to cut your mother some bread?’
    Julia, jumping up from her seat, flung herself upon the loaf. ‘Poor starving Mama!’ she cried, infected by the general gaiety. ‘How cruel we are to you!’
    When the meal was over, and the family dispersed, Mr Pardew came creeping back into Sarah’s thoughts. And now, in his absence, she was drawn to him, remembering his good looks, his good nature, his unhappiness, and thinking she had perhaps been unkind. Painful and absurd as the situation was, there was something of secret gratification to be derived from it: her vanity, little catered for hitherto, could not lightly dismiss the tribute of a man’s desire, even such a man as Mr Pardew, who was, when all was said, an eminently respectable, well-bred, eligible person. Nor, though it embarrassed her, did his devotion diminish for her his personal attractions, such as they were. He was good and he was kind, manly in appearance and graceful in his movements; and if only he would consent never to open his mouth, except to put food into it, she half-believed she could have loved him. It could not be denied that marriage would be a triumph,a solace to self-esteem, and that this first chance might also be her last. In pursuit of the idea that she had perhaps done him some injustice, by being perversely over-critical, her daydreaming imagination, lacking the corrective of his presence, began wilfully endowing him not only with the virtues he might be supposed to possess, sincerity, loyalty, resolute good intentions, but with qualities that bore no relation to what she knew of him. Not wit: she drew the line there. He would never sparkle. He would never set the table in a roar. But humour, yes: she was determined to give him at least a modicum of humour. A man in love, or thinking himself in love, was never, she supposed, at his brightest; but, once his prayer were granted, his ambition achieved, he would surely be bolder, less dog-eyed, more capable of taking a point, or seeing a joke, without having it explained to him. Marriage could not fail to effect that much.
    She began to see that her former judgment had been hasty, superficial. He had, after all, shown unusual enterprise. It was greatly to his credit that he had approached her direct, defying convention by not first asking her parents’ permission.