Cassandra's Sister by Veronica Bennett

like, Cass. See, here are your lavender plants, and roses, and your beloved pink ribbons.”
    Cass was moved. “But why…” she began, then hesitated, unsure how to proceed.
    James proceeded for her. “We originally thought of it as a wedding gift,” he explained, “but when we heard you were to meet Tom at Godmersham, Anne suggested we give it to you now, so that you can wear it while you are there. It is a long time since you have had a new shawl, our mother informs me, and I know that neither you nor Jenny ever asks for anything.”
    â€œOh, thank you, thank you,” repeated Cass. “Thank you both.”
    â€œCome, try it on,” urged James.
    Anne helped Cass set the shawl around her shoulders. Cass, pink with pleasure, paraded in the restricted space. “Is it not fine stuff?” she asked, swishing it as she walked. “I can hardly feel it. It is the very best Indian silk. James, you have spent much too much money on me, you know.”
    Jenny’s delight in the gift was tempered by her brother’s words. It was true that she and Cass never asked for anything. It was the responsibility of other people to notice their needs and supply them, because they had no money of their own.
    It was a timely reminder. Feeling ungrateful and ungenerous, and aware that such feelings would never have occurred to Cassandra, Jenny wondered if anyone would remember when
she
was twenty-one and was going visiting, or collecting her trousseau, that an expensive Indian shawl might be welcome in
her
wardrobe.
    How satisfying it must be
, she thought,
to have some money, however little, that one has earned oneself!
    â€œAnd you shall wear it at Godmersham?” Anne was asking Cass.
    â€œOf course! I am impatient already to show it to Tom.”
    â€œYou look very well in it, my dear,” observed Mama proudly. “If Tom’s company makes you as radiant in Kent as you are at this moment, the entire county will flock there to marvel at your beauty. I could not wish for a lovelier daughter.”
    Anne laughed uneasily. “Are you forgetting Jenny is here?”
    â€œHow could I?” Mama looked at Jenny approvingly. “My Jenny has her own beauty.”
    Jenny decided to take advantage of the public situation and her mother’s mellow mood. “When shall
I
visit Kent, Mama?”
    Mama paused before she said, “When Cassandra and Tom are married, perhaps.”
    â€œBut that could be years!” exclaimed Jenny unthinkingly. “I mean, that is…”
    â€œYes, it could,” said Mama. “So in the meantime you must await an invitation from Edward and Elizabeth. It is not for us to make their arrangements for them.”
    Nobody reminded her that the arrangement for Cassandra to meet Tom at Godmersham had been made by the Reverend. “But, Mama,” continued Jenny, “I so wish I could go alone, now I am grown up.”
    â€œYou are not nineteen yet,” said Mama reasonably. “You have plenty of time for parading yourself at Godmersham or any other place. Anne, could I trouble you for a glass of water? I think I shall take a powder; my stomach is weak today. But you know, Jenny, the place I would most like to take you to is not Kent, but Bath. The liveliness of that city never diminishes, however many times one goes there. But Papa does nothing about arranging it.”
    Jenny had no wish to visit the city of Bath. One brief stay there had convinced her that if “liveliness” meant hot, smelly rooms full of painted women vying with one another to capture the most foppish of the men, she would happily trade them for the “dullness” of Steventon. She disliked cards, rich food made her queasy, and whenever she returned from going about the Bath streets she had to dry her stockings.
    â€œIt never stops raining in Bath,” she said crossly. “And the puddles are the deepest and dirtiest in the