“What can the mother be like, and isn’t the father a politician or a contractor?” with a laugh.
“No,” returned Phillipa. “I asked father to find out about them. Mr. Nevins is a reputable banker, a very good judge of loans and is rated quite highly in London. Then he buys curios and pictures, so he must have some taste. Think what that silly girl will have, enough to make any three girls of us fancy ourselves heroines of the Arabian Nights; but the mother can’t have any sense.”
“I think the modistes are largely to blame. No doubt the mother ordered a handsome evening dress, and the woman made it handsome and expensive and quite useless. You don’t see Zay Crawford with any such things!”
“Zay is beauty unadorned.”
“And Miss Nevins is ugliness intensified. I am really sorry for her, though she has improved a very little. But when you think of the place she might take in society—”
“And the journeys!”
“Still, I wouldn’t want such a mother.”
Phillipa went to her room to finish her Latin verses.
“Though why you should be compelled to write Latin verses when you can’t make decent English rhymes I don’t see,” she grumbled.
She was almost through when the door flew open and shut again with a bang and Louie Howe threw herself on the floor clasping Phillipa’s knees, her eyes distraught with terror.