Mary held it wiser to let well alone.
"DO be guided by me this time, John," she urged, when she had heard her
brother out: "You and Zara will never hit it off, however often you
try."
But the belief was ingrained in John that the most suitable head for his
establishment was one of his own blood. He answered indignantly. "And
why not pray, may I ask? Who IS to hit it off, as you put it, if not two
of a family?"
"Oh, John. . . "--Mary felt quite apologetic for her brother. "Clever
as Zara is, she's not at all fitted for a post of this kind. She's no
hand with the servants, and children don't seem to take to her--young
children, I mean."
"Not fitted? Bah!" said John. "Every woman is fitted by nature to rear
children and manage a house."
"They should be, I know," yielded Mary in conciliatory fashion. "But
with Zara it doesn't seem to be the case."
"Then she ought to be ashamed of herself, my dear Mary--ashamed of
herself--and that's all about it!"
Zara wept into a dainty handkerchief and was delivered of a rigmarole of
complaints against her brother, the servants, the children. According to
her, the last were naturally perverse, and John indulged them so
shockingly that she had been powerless to carry out reforms. Did she
punish them, he cancelled the punishments; if she left their naughtiness
unchecked, he accused her of indifference. Then her housekeeping had not
suited him: he reproached her with extravagance, with mismanagement,
even with lining her own purse.
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