"You need not be afraid, that I shall ever allow such a heavy obligation to escape my memory," returned Helen, with complete equanimity.
Was she likely to forget these months of making, and mending, parcel carrying, and general slavery to her cousins Clara and Carrie? Her companion was conscious that there was a hidden sting in this speech, but contented herself with gobbling some incoherent remark, lost in her throat, about "ingratitude" and "insolence." After this little skirmish the two ladies did not exchange another syllable, and they reached their own hall door in dead silence.
"Odious, detestable girl!" cried Clara to her sister, as she flung off her hat, and tore off her gloves in their mutual bower. "What do you think? When we were coming home we met that Mr. Quentin, and he stopped and talked to her for ever so long, and she never introduced me!"
"Well, I'm sure! However, it was no loss, you know he has not sixpence."
"No; but listen. He asked her where she was staying, and said he was coming to call, and she actually told him, with the utmost composure, that he need not mind, as she was going to a situation on Monday as governess—I was crimson! I'm sure she did it out of pure spite, just to make me feel uncomfortable."
"Not a doubt of it," acquiesced her sister. "How excessively annoying! That man knows the Sharpes, and Talbots, and Jenkins', and the whole thing will come out now; after all the trouble we have taken to keep it quiet, and telling every one she was going to friends in the suburbs."
"Yes," chimed in Clara, wrathfully. "What possesses people to persecute us with questions about our cousin—our pretty cousin, forsooth! Such a sweet-looking, interesting girl. Pah! I'm perfectly sick of her name, and the prying and pushing of one's acquaintance, is really shameless. Old Mrs. Parsons has returned to the charge again and again. She has no more tact or delicacy than a cook. Do we ever worry her, about her poor relations, and 'how they have been left,' as she calls it?"
"No, thank goodness," replied Carrie, emphatically; now addressing herself to her own plain reflection in the looking-glass. "There is no coarse, vulgar curiosity about us, I am happy to say. We are ladies."
And with this sustaining conviction in their bosoms, these two sweet sisters descended affectionately arm in arm to luncheon.
On Monday morning, Mrs. Platt herself carried her niece to her future abode in the family brougham. Their destination was a square, detached, red brick mansion, remarkable for long rows of windows with brown wire blinds, an outward air of primness bordering on severity, and a brass plate on the gate the size of a tea-tray, which bore the following address: "Malvern House.—Mrs. Kane's establishment for young ladies."