Rosamond was provoked into a display of her solitary bit of ecclesiastical knowledge—“A friar’s gown, the most Popish vestment in the church.”
Cecil, thoroughly angered, flushed up to the eyes and bit her lips, unable to find a reply, while all the gentlemen laughed. Frank asked if it were really so, and Mr. Bindon made the well-known explanation that the Geneva gown was neither more nor less than the monk’s frock.
“I shall write and ask Mr. Venn,” gasped Cecil; but her husband stifled the sound by saying, “I saw little Pettitt, Julius, this afternoon, overwhelmed with gratitude to you for all the care you took of his old mother, and all his waxen busts.”
“Ah! by the bye!” said Charlie, “I did meet the Rector staggering out, with the fascinating lady with the long eyelashes in one arm, and the moustached hero in the other.”
“There was no pacifying the old lady without,” said Julius. “I had just coaxed her to the door, when she fell to wringing her hands. Ah! those lovely models, that were worth thirty shillings each, with natural hair—that they should be destroyed! If the heat or the water did but come near them, Adolphus would never get over it. I could only pacify her by promising to go back for these idols of his heart as soon as she was safe; and after all, I had to dash at them through the glass, and that was the end of my spectacles.”
“Where was Pettitt himself?”
“Well employed, poor little fellow, saving the people in those three cottages of his. No one supposed his shop in danger, but the fire took a sudden freak and came down Long Street; and though the house is standing, it had to be emptied and deluged with water to save it. I never knew Pettitt had a mother till I found her mounting guard, like one distracted, over her son’s bottles of perfumery.”
“And dyes?” murmured Raymond under his breath; but Frank caught the sound, and said, “Ah, Julius! don’t I remember his inveigling you into coming out with scarlet hair?”
“I don’t think I’ve seen him since,” said Julius, laughing. “I believe he couldn’t resist such an opportunity of practising his art. And for my part, I must say for myself, that it was in our first holidays, and Raymond and Miles had been black and blue the whole half-year from having fought my battles whenever I was called either ‘Bunny’ or ‘Grandfather.’ So when he assured me he could turn my hair to as sweet a raven-black as Master Poynsett’s, I thought it would be pleasing to all, forgetting that he could not dye my eyes, and that their effect would have been some degrees more comical.”
“For shame, Julius!” said Rosamond. “Don’t you know that one afternoon, when Nora had cried for forty minutes over her sum, she declared that she wanted to make her eyes as beautiful as Mr. Charnock’s. Well, what was the effect?”