"Yes, I am very sorry," answered Mrs. Newbold, emphatically; "my little daughter, you must not listen to such nonsense. You must get your dolly next time, or come to me, when Mdlle. Lamien has a headache."
"Poor Lammy!" echoed the child, "she was cross, too, and said Sarah was very wrong, every one wasn't made with Miss Dick's bright face and sweet temper; but I could make myself like her if I tried to always say a kind thing and not a horrid one, though the horrid one might be cleverer."
There was a moment's unbearable awkwardness as Mimi's sage remarks fell upon the burning ears of her audience; then Esther made a move, quickly followed by the other ladies, and the party broke up, each glad to escape the embarrassment of the moment. Esther alone noticed Miss James's face, flushed with passion and mortification, and sighed involuntarily.
She had reason afterwards to remember that look, and her sigh.
CHAPTER VI.
STAGE-STRUCK.
For the next week but little was talked of at the Folly, save the forthcoming theatricals.
The morning hours grew strangely silent. Gone was the light laughter, banished the echo of gay voices, the quick coming and going of youthful feet; indeed, to any one entering suddenly and unknowing, the air of the house was so changed and transformed they might well exclaim, "The place is haunted!"
And haunted it certainly was, but with fair ghosts in modern raiment, who, if they moved about at all, did so with tragic step and abstracted gaze, or with comic gesture and exaggerated action, accompanied by eagerly-moving lips, from which, however, no sound proceeded, while each and all held, tightly clasped and closely scanned, one of those thin yellow paper books which Mr. French has made so happily familiar to all of us.