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I looked at my little sister, one eyebrow raised. ‘You think that do you?’ I patted her head. ‘Bless you.’
She gifted me with one of her radiant smiles that lit up the whole room. ‘So you agree with me?’
‘Not in a million years! But I’m sure it’s very noble of you to be so ridiculously trusting.’
After dinner, I slipped out of the dining room before my aunt could catch me and drag me off to her latest you-know-what. Grabbing my favourite book from where I had hidden it from Aunt Brank, at the very back of the small library’s lowest shelf, I made my way into the garden, behind my favourite bush, where no dogs ever peed and no aunts ever disturbed me.
Sighing with contentment, I flicked open Some Reflections upon Marriage. I didn’t even have to leaf through it. I knew the book so well, it fell open just at the passage I was looking for.
But, alas! What poor Woman is ever taught that she should have a higher Design than to get her a Husband? Heaven will fall in, of course; and if she makes but an Obedient and Dutiful Wife, she cannot miss of it. A Husband, indeed, is thought by both Sexes so very valua
ble, that scarce a Man who can keep himself clean and make a bow, but thinks he is good enough to pretend to any Woman!
I gave another contented sigh. How wonderful it was to have found someone with whom I was completely and utterly of one mind - even if she had already been dead for over a hundred years.
I was so lost in Mary Astell’s witty treatise that I nearly missed the light patter of feet passing my bush. Nearly, but not quite - because some part of my mind had been waiting for that sound all along. Raising my head, I saw a flash of white between the branches of the bush, and knew I had been right. It was she!
Closing my book and slipping it into my pocket, I peeked around the bush - and there she was! My little sister, Ella, hurrying towards the barrier between our garden and the neighbours’. And there, on the other side, was he - Edmund, the piano tuner’s son, who, for the last year had been romancing my little sister, and whom, in my magnificent mercy, I had not yet decided to eviscerate.
They rushed towards each other like Pyramus and Thisbe, separated by an impenetrable barrier. Only where the two characters from Greek mythology had had to make do with a solid wall, fate had bestowed dozens of gaps between the poles of a fence on this happy pair.
‘Ella, my love!’
‘Edmund, my love!’
‘My everything!’
‘My sunshine!’
I glanced up at the sky, wondering idly if either of them had noticed it was already nighttime, and the moon was standing high. Probably not.
‘Oh, Ella! Words cannot express how much I love you! The hours away from you have been torture!’
‘So have mine! So have mine, Edmund! The entire day I was writhing in pain until I could see you again!’
Really? I cocked my head. I didn’t particularly notice that when you asked me to pass you the salt at dinner, little sister.
‘Oh, Ella!’
‘Oh, Edmund!’
‘Oh, my Ella!’
‘Oh, my Edmund!’
‘I love you so!’
‘And I love you even more!’
‘Impossible! Nobody could possibly love anybody more than I love you!’
‘Except me!’
‘No!’
‘Yes!’
‘Definitely not!’
