"It is father's wish," Agatha replied. "The bicycle was sold by his orders." "Oh!" Prudence exclaimed, with a gesture of impatience. "I know. What's the good of talking? I am sick of all this pretence of anxiety. You hate me to have any enjoyment. You never rest--you never have rested, from seeking to make my life colourless and dull. You are satisfied only when you keep me sewing, or working in the parish. Well, I won't sew any more--for fear I prick my fingers, and I won't work in the parish either from a nervous dread of having my morals contaminated. If I can't do the things I like, I won't do the things I don't like either." Miss Agatha's anger, if more controlled, was every whit as great as Prudence's. She gazed down upon her sister where she lay upon the sofa with eyes of cold dislike. Always they had been antagonistic. She had resented her father's second marriage bitterly, and had disliked his young wife: the earlier resentment, and the dislike for Prudence's mother, influenced her largely in her antagonism towards the child of the marriage, the child who was dearer to their father than any of his other children, and who was so unlike the rest. But she had, according to her own view, conscientiously done her duty by her young sister: the accusation of jealous injustice stung her; she felt that she had not merited that. "You are wicked and ungrateful," she said. "You display a great want of control, and an unchristian spirit. I hope that later, when you have given yourself time to reflect, you will regret what you have said. I confess I don't understand you." "No," Prudence rejoined. "You never have understood me. I don't suppose you ever will." "You are not," Miss Agatha answered shortly, "so complex as you imagine." Having nothing further to say, and feeling irritated by the laugh with which her rebuke was received, she closed the interview by leaving the room.