‘Oh, come now! I wonder which looks more like the set-up one,’ said Herbert, whose wider range had resulted in making him much alive to Ida’s shortcomings, and who looked on at her noisy style of flirtation with the eye of a grave censor. Whatever he might be himself, he knew what a young lady ought to be.
He triumphed a little when, during the few days spent in London, Constance wrote of a delightful evening when, while her uncle and aunt and Miss Morton had gone to an entertainment for Bertha’s match-box makers, she had been permitted to have Rose Rollstone to spend the time with her, the carriage, by their kind contrivance, fetching the girl both in going and coming.
The two young things had been thoroughly happy together. Rose had gone on improving
herself; her companions in the art embroidery line were girls of a good class, with a few ladies among them, and their tone was good and refined. It was the fashion among them to attend the classes, Bible and secular, put in their way, and their employers conscientiously attended to their welfare, so that Rose was by no means an unfitting companion for the High School maiden, and they most happily compared notes over their very different lives, when they were not engaged in playing with little Cea, as the unwieldy name of Miss Morton’s protégée had been softened. She was a very pretty little creature, with big blue eyes and hair that could be called golden, and very full of life and drollery, so that she was a treat to both; and when the housemaid, whose charge she was, insisted on her coming to bed, they begged to superintend her evening toilet, and would have played antics with her in her crib half the night if they had not been inexorably chased away.
Then they sat down on low stools in the balcony, among the flowers, in convenient proximity for the caresses they had not yet outgrown, and had what they called ‘a sweet talk.’
Constance had been much impressed with the beauty of the embroidery, and thought it must be delightful to do such things.
‘Yes, for the forewoman,’ said Rose, ‘but there’s plenty of dull work; the same over and over again, and one little stitch ever so small gone amiss throws all wrong. Miss Grey told us to recollect it was just like our lives!’
‘That’s nice!’ said Constance. ‘And it is for the Church and Almighty God’s service?’
‘Some of it,’ said Rose, ‘but there’s a good deal only for dresses, and furniture, and screens.’
‘Don’t you feel like Sunday when you are doing altar-cloths and stools?’ asked Constance reverently.