Alice Sit-By-The-Fire

								

kiss me, I shall kick him.’
If Amy makes any reply the words arrive upside-down and are
unintelligible. The maid announces Miss Dunbar. Then Amy rises, brings
her head to the position in which they are usually carried; and she
and Ginevra look into each other’s eyes. They always do this when they
meet, though they meet several times a day, and it is worth doing, for
what they see in those pellucid pools is love eternal. Thus they loved
at school (in their last two terms), and thus they will love till the
grave encloses them. These thoughts, and others even more beautiful,
are in their minds as they gaze at each other now. No man will ever be
able to say ‘Amy,’ or to say ‘Ginevra,’ with such a trill as they are
saying it.
‘Ginevra, my beloved.’
‘My Amy, my better self.’
‘My other me.’
There is something almost painful in love like this.
‘Are you well, Ginevra?’
‘Quite well, Amy.’
Heavens, the joy of Amy because Ginevra is quite well.
‘How did my Amy sleep?’
‘I had a good night.’
How happy is Ginevra because Amy has had a good night. All this time
they have been slowly approaching each other, drawn by a power
stronger than themselves. Their intention is to kiss. They do so.
Cosmo snorts, and betakes himself to some other room, his bedroom
probably, where a man may be alone with mannish things, his razor, for
instance. The maidens do not resent his rudeness. They know that poor
Cosmo’s time will come, and they are glad to be alone, for they have
much to say that is for no other mortal ears. Some of it is sure to go
into the diary; indeed if we were to put our ear to the drawer where
the diary is we could probably hear its little heart ticking in unison
with theirs.
It is Ginevra who speaks first. She is indeed the bolder of the two.
She grips Amy’s hand and says quite firmly, ‘Amy, shall we go to
another to-night?’ This does not puzzle Amy, she is prepared for it,
her honest grey eyes even tell that she has wanted it, but now that it
is come she quails a little. ‘Another theatre?’ she murmurs.
‘Ginevra, that would be five in one week.’
Ginevra does not blanch. ‘Yes,’ she says recklessly, ‘but it is also
only eight in seventeen years.’
‘Isn’t it,’ says Amy, comforted. ‘And they have taught us so much,
haven’t they? Until Monday, dear, when we went to our first real play
we didn’t know what Life is.’
‘We were two raw, unbleached school-girls, Amy--absolutely
unbleached.’
It is such a phrase as this that gives Ginevra the moral ascendancy in
their discussions.
‘Of course,’ Amy ventures, looking perhaps a little unbleached even
now, ‘of course I had my diary, dear, and I do think that, even before
Monday, there were things in it of a not wholly ordinary kind.’
‘Nothing,’ persists Ginevra cruelly, ‘that necessitated your keeping