Sometimes, but very seldom, Flora and Hilda used to quarrel; sometimes, and more often, Hilda and Anna; nearly every day, as it seemed to Rosalie, Anna and Flora. Rosalie got to dislike these quarrels very much. They went on and on and on; that was the disturbing unpleasantness of them. The parties to them would sit in a room and simply keep it up forever, not arguing all the time, but between long pauses suddenly coming out with things at one another; or they wouldn’t speak to one another sometimes for days together, and all sorts of small enterprises of Rosalie’s were interfered with by these ruptures of relations. Innumerable things in Rosalie’s life seemed to her to depend on the mutual good will of two quarrellers; many books, some old toys, walks, combined games with Carlo who was Anna’s and Rover who was Flora’s; innumerable delights with such seemed to be unexpectedly stopped because of “Oh, no, if you prefer to be with Anna you can stay with Anna”; or, “Oh, no. If you like Flora’s paints so much you can use Flora’s brushes; these are my brushes.” A quarrel would in any case produce a strained atmosphere in which everything became unnatural and this strained atmosphere went on and on and on. And the thing that Rosalie noticed was the complete difference between these quarrels of her sisters and the quarrels between Harold and Robert. Robert was rising between the years of fourteen and eighteen in those days and Harold between twenty-two and twenty-six. Most violent quarrels sometimes sprung up between them but they were physically violent, that was the point, and after swift and appalling fury, and terrible kicks from Robert and horrifying thumps from Harold they were astonishingly soon over and done with and forgotten. On one awful day, Rosalie saw Robert and Harold rolling on the floor together. Robert bumped Harold’s head three most frightful bumps on the floor and said between his teeth, “There! There! There!” Harold twisted himself up and hurled Robert half across the room and then rushed at him and punched him with punches that made Robert go, “Ur! Ur! Ur!” Rosalie, at her age, ought to have cried with grief and dismay or to have run away screaming; but instead she only watched with awe. With terrified awe, as with the terrified awe that an encounter of tigers or of elephants at the Zoo might arouse; but with awe and no sort of grief as her sole emotion. Men were different. There it was again! They did these fearful things, and these fearful things were much more satisfactory to behold, not nearly so disturbing and aggravating to watch, as the interminable bickerings of the quarrels of her sisters.