“But that ain’t all,” continued Lilac; “just as I was turning to go he calls after me, ‘What’s yer name?’ And when I told him he shouts out, ‘What!’ with his eyes hanging out ever so far.”
“Well, I dare say he thought it was a silly-sounding sort of a name,” observed Agnetta.
“He said it over and over to hisself, and laughed right out—‘Lilac White! White Lilac!’ says he. ‘What a subjeck! What a name! Splendid!’ An’ then he says to me quieter, ‘You’re a very nice little girl indeed, and if Mother will let you come I’ll give you sixpence for every hour you stand.’ So then I went an’ asked Mother, and she said yes, an’ then I ran all the way here to tell you.”
Lilac looked round as she finished her wonderful story. Agnetta’s eyes were travelling slowly over her cousin’s whole person, from her face down to the thick, laced boots on her feet, and back again. “I can’t mek out,” she said at length, “whatever it is that he wants to paint you for, and dressed like that! Why, there ain’t a mossel of colour about you! Now, if you had my Sunday blue!”
“Oh, Agnetta!” exclaimed Lilac at the mention of such impossible elegance.
“And,” pursued Agnetta, “a few artificials in yer hair, like the ladies in our Book of Beauty, that ’ud brighten you up a bit. Bella’s got some red roses with dewdrops on ’em, an’ a caterpillar just like life. She’d lend you ’em p’r’aps, an’ I don’t know but what I’d let you have my silver locket just for once.”
“I’m afraid he wouldn’t like that,” said Lilac dejectedly, “because he said quite earnest, ‘Mind you bring the bonnet’.”
She saw herself for a moment in the splendid attire Agnetta had described, and gave a little sigh of longing.
“I must go back,” she said, getting up suddenly, “Mother’ll want me. There’s lots to do at home.”
“I’ll go with you a piece,” said Agnetta; “we’ll go through the farmyard way so as I can leave the basin.”