It was growing dark before the sisters reached their home. They found Mrs. Aumerle busily engaged in cutting out clothes for the poor, wielding her large, bright scissors with quick hand, and directing its operations with an experienced eye. She looked up from her occupation as Ida and Mabel entered the room.
“What has made you so late?” asked the lady.
“Oh! we have had a nice, long chat with Cecily Bardon,” replied Mabel; “we never thought of the hour.”
“I hope that you will think of it another time,” said Mrs. Aumerle, resuming her cutting and clipping; “it is not proper for young ladies to be crossing the fields after sunset without an escort.”
“Not proper!” repeated Mabel half aloud, her cheek suffused with an angry flush.
“We have been always accustomed,” said Ida more calmly, “to walk whither and at what hour we pleased, and we have never found the smallest inconvenience arise from so doing.”
“Your having done so is no reason why you should do so,” said the lady firmly; “you have been too much left to yourselves, and it is well that you have now some one of a little experience to judge what is suitable or unsuitable for two young girls of your age.”
Mabel turned down the corners of her mouth after the fashion of Dr. Bardon; happily Mrs. Aumerle was too busy with a jacket-sleeve to look at her step-daughter’s face. Ida seated herself without reply; but Pride stole up at that moment and whispered in her ear, “You can manage quite as well for yourself as the meddling dame can manage for you. She might be content to let well alone, and confine herself to her own affairs.”
Ida now entered upon the subject of the class for farmers’ boys and labouring lads, and explained the necessity for holding it on the particular day and hour on which the mothers’ meeting usually took place. She dwelt with gentle eloquence upon the difficulties and temptations of the youths who would be benefited by the new arrangement; but it tried her patience not a little to hear the snip-snip of the scissors all the time that she was speaking.