To Sylvia she said, "Now I know exactly how a
balloon feels when it is pricked."
Sylvia agreed ruefully. "I might have known Judith would manage to
make me feel flat if I got wrought up about it. She hates a fuss made
over anything, and she can always take you down if you make one."
She remembered with a singular feeling of discomfiture the throbbing
phrases of her letter, written under the high pressure of the quarrel
with Aunt Victoria. She could almost see the expression of austere
distaste in the stern young beauty of Judith's face. Judith was always
making her appear foolish!
"We were both of us," commented Mrs. Marshall-Smith dryly, "somewhat
mistaken about the degree of seriousness with which Judith would take
the information."
Sylvia forgot her vexation and sprang loyally to Judith's defense.
"Why, of course she takes it like a trained nurse, like a
doctor--feels it a purely medical affair--as I suppose it is. We might
have known she'd feel that way. But as to how she really feels inside,
personally, you can't tell anything by her letter! You probably
couldn't tell anything by her manner if she were here. You never can.
She may be simply wild about a thing inside, but you'd never guess."
Mrs. Marshall-Smith ventured to express some skepticism as to the
existence of volcanic feelings always so sedulously concealed. "After
all, can you be so very sure that she is ever 'simply wild' if she
never shows anything?"
"Oh, you're _sure_, all right, if you've lived with her--you feel it.
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