“Pelham!” interrupted his wife sternly, “if you are going to repeat any of them, please wait until Honor and I have left the verandah. The child is innocent enough,” she explained to Mark, “but mischievous, and she delights in seeing her elders look miserable. Oh dear me! dear me! I wish the next ten days were over. Ben can’t abide her, and no wonder—she dropped hot wax on his nose; and last time I had her here, she tried on every one of my best caps and bonnets, and threw them all over the place. But that was not the worst. At breakfast, one morning, she heard Mr. Skinner telling some story of a horse he had bought, which turned out to be a screw, and she clapped her hands in great glee and screamed, ‘I know what that is! I heard mother say that you were an awful screw.’ I thought I should have had a fit, and Mr. Skinner has never put a foot inside this house from that day.”
CHAPTER XXV.
SWEET PRIMROSE JUSTIFIES HER REPUTATION.
Two days after this conversation, Sweet Primrose was kicking her long legs in Rookwood verandah, as she lay flat on the matting, absorbed in a picture-book. A picture-book, no matter how quaint, novel, or voluminous, never lasted this young lady for more than five minutes—as Mrs. Brande well knew. She would toss it scornfully aside, and once more begin to wander to and fro with her wearisome little parrot cry of “Amuse me, amuse me!”
At present she was on her good behaviour. She had taken an immense fancy to Mark, and she was surprisingly polite to Honor; and as she was undoubtedly a most lovely little creature, with delicate features, wistful violet eyes, and hair like spun silk, the young people were inclined to make much of her, and to believe that Mr. and Mrs. Brande were a prejudiced elderly pair, who did not know how to take the right way with children; and this particular child was disposed to favour them with a great deal of her society—and they enjoyed it.
She accompanied them about the garden,—generally walking between them, tightly holding their hands. She spent a considerable time every morning in Honor’s room, fingering all her knickknacks, unfolding her handkerchiefs, upsetting pin-boxes, and watching with undisguised interest how Honor did her hair.
The result of the inspection being, that at breakfast she was in a position to announce to the company the following gratifying statement—
“I saw Honor doing her hair; it’s long and real, like mine,” with a conceited toss of her blonde locks—“down to here,” indicating the length on her own small person. “She does not put on bits, like mamma. Mamma’s fringe is all pinned on, with long pieces that fasten it at the side, like this,” demonstrating their situation with tiny tell-tale fingers; “or like you,” turning to Mrs. Brande. “I saw your plait!”
“Well, I hope you admired it!” rejoined the lady, with somewhat staggering sang froid. “It grew on my own head once.”
And Sweet, finding that the topic was not a painful one, ceased to pursue it.
She was fond of sitting on Mark’s knee, with her arm closely locked round his neck, her cheek pressed against his, looking at pictures or listening to stories. Indeed, he seemed (as Mrs. Brande remarked) to have hypnotized her. Ben still distrusted the child, so did Ben’s grandpapa and grandmamma; but every one else appeared to think that Sweet Primrose was now quite a pattern—a reformed character. She went down to the band, exquisitely dressed, in fluffed out petticoats and fine silk stockings, in charge of her fat, jewelled ayah; there she secretly administered pinches right and left to other children, and rudely criticized their clothes. She strolled into the ladies’ room, ostensibly to look at the picture papers; and she was, among her elders, so quiet, so piano, such a dainty, flounced-out little mortal, that old acquaintances could hardly realize that this was their own original and most disagreeable “Sweet.”