Now, while she is gazing into space Mrs. Braefield is announced. Mrs. Cameron does not start from revery. She never starts. But she makes a weary movement of annoyance, resettles herself, and lays the serious book on the sofa table. Elsie enters, young, radiant, dressed in all the perfection of the fashion, that is, as ungracefully as in the eyes of an artist any gentlewoman can be; but rich merchants who are proud of their wives so insist, and their wives, in that respect, submissively obey them.
The ladies interchange customary salutations, enter into the customary preliminaries of talk, and after a pause Elsie begins in earnest.
"But sha'n't I see Lily? Where is she?"
"I fear she has gone into the town. A poor little boy, who did our errands, has met with an accident,—fallen from a cherry-tree."
"Which he was robbing?"
"Probably."
"And Lily has gone to lecture him?"
"I don't know as to that; but he is much hurt, and Lily has gone to see what is the matter with him."
Mrs. Braefield, in her frank outspoken way,—"I don't take much to girls of Lily's age in general, though I am passionately fond of children. You know how I do take to Lily; perhaps because she is so like a child. But she must be an anxious charge to you."
Mrs. Cameron replied by an anxious "No; she is still a child, a very good one; why should I be anxious?"