"You'll never make a ladies' maid, Sybil," Mary exclaimed, angling the silver-backed looking glass to try and take in the fruit of Sybil's labors.
It was another rainy afternoon and her groom suggested taking Nyx out for a ride wasn't wise though he'd saddle her if she insisted. She could tell she was being humored and would have preferred the polite but firm "No, milady" Carson would have uttered, so she'd just offered the black mare the apple she'd brought with her and retreated to her room with a French novel Mama would not approve of but she'd been more than willing to toss it aside when Sybil knocked and begged a chance to arrange her hair. Edith had tried to join them but she'd, as usual, had nothing to offer except some pitiful whinging about how Perdita Cameron had cut her at a party, as if anyone of fourteen could truly "cut" someone. It was baffling to think that she and Edith had the same grandmothers, Granny always ready with a sharp retort and Grandmother Martha Levinson known for her own bon mots in epistolary form; Edith was beyond the pale, equal parts bathos and syrup, but this time it was Sybil who, through a mouth full of pins, managed to say, "Edith, if you haven't any advice, please, do stop distracting me! This isn't as easy as Marie-Laure makes it look when she dresses Mama's hair!"
It seemed Edith's departure had not been soon enough or perhaps was entirely irrelevant. They didn't have any guests for dinner tonight, not even Granny, so she could take her time combing out Sybil's handiwork but for now she couldn't help thinking, the coiffure looked like nothing so much as a great, fluffy everlasting syllabub or that cat that Anna, a new housemaid, was trying to tame, if it had been pulled backward through a hedgerow.
"You don't like it, Mary?" Sybil asked, not entirely down-cast but clearly disappointed.
"Well, darling, I can't say that I do, but I do like you and you aren't meant to be a ladies' maid, so it's not great loss, is it?" Mary replied.
"No, but I feel sure I'm meant to do something. I'd quite like to be an explorer, in the Antarctic or the Amazon, but I can't see how I can practice at that here at Downton, can you?" Sybil asked.
Mary laughed at how dear and adventurous Sybil was, the most curious and appealing twelve year old Mary had ever met and a blessing of a sister, even without the comparison with perpetually drooping Edith. "I do think your options are limited in that regard. Perhaps we might explore through the green baize door and see if there are any of those tarts left and then, if we are quite quiet, I think we might retrieve something exciting to read from Papa's library. Will that do?"
"It will have to, but first I'll have to take care of your hair. You can't leave the room like that," Sybil said, becoming cheerful and practical again with the promise of sweets and a small transgression.
"I think I'll manage the deconstruction. If I get in too much of a tangle, call for Anna. She's usually about and she won't laugh—not too much, in any case," Mary said, plucking pins from the toppling pompadour, blowing the strands out of her eyes and sticking her tongue out at Sybil like a street urchin. It had the desired result—Sybil began giggling and kept it up the thirty-five minutes to took to return Mary to her generally neat and ladylike appearance. But this time, she had a smile to match Sybil's and an equal hunger for the plum tarts.