Miss Barrington, with Josephine at one side and Polly Dill on the other, sat at work in her little room that opened on the garden. Each was engaged in some peculiar task, and each seemed bent upon her labor in that preoccupied way which would imply that the cares of needlework make no mean call upon human faculties. A close observer would, however, have remarked that though Miss Barrington stitched vigorously away at the background for a fierce tiger with measly spots over him, Polly seemed oftener to contemplate than continue her handiwork; while Josephine's looks strayed constantly from the delicate tracery she was following, to the garden, where the roses blended with the jasmine, and the drooping honeysuckles hung listlessly over the boughs of the apple-tree.
“If your work wearies you, Fifine,” said Miss Dinah, “you had better read for us.”
“Oh no, not at all, aunt; I like it immensely. I was only wondering why one should devise such impossible foliage, when we have the real thing before us, in all its grace and beauty.”
“Humph!” said the old lady; “the sight of a real tiger would not put me out of countenance with my own.”
“It certainly ought not, ma'am,” said Polly; while she added, in a faint whisper, “for there is assuredly no rivalry in the case.”
“Perhaps Miss Dill is not too absorbed in her study of nature, as applied to needlework, to read out the newspaper.”
“I will do it with pleasure, ma'am. Where shall I begin?”
“Deaths and marriages first, of course, child. Then fashion and varieties; take the accidents afterwards, and close with anything remarkable in politics, or any disastrous occurrence in high life.”
Polly obeyed to the letter; once only straying into an animated account of a run with the Springfield fox-hounds, where three riders out of a large field came in at the death; when Miss Dinah stopped her abruptly, saying, “I don't care for the obituary of a fox, young lady. Go on with something else.”
“Will you have the recent tragedy at Ring's End, ma'am?”