Just as she came to her hair, the old nurse knocked and asked whether she wanted help.
‘Thank you, I’ve been used to dress myself,’ said Dolores, rather proudly.
‘I’ll help you now, missy, for prayers are over, and they are all gone to breakfast, only my lady said you were not to be disturbed, and Miss Mysie will be up presently again to bring you down.’
She spoke low, and in an accent that Dolores afterwards learnt was Scotch; and she was a tall, thin, bony woman, with sandy hair, who looked as if she had never been young. She brushed and plaited the dark hair in a manner that seemed to the owner more wearisome and less tender than Caroline’s fashion; and did not talk more than to inquire into the fashion of wearing it, and to say that Miss Mohun’s boxes had been sent from London, demanding the keys that they might be unpacked.
‘I can do that myself,’ said Dolores, who did not like any stranger to meddle with her things.
‘Ye could tak them oot, nae doubt, but I must sort them. It’s my lady’s orders,’ said Mrs. Halfpenny, with all the determination of the sergeant, her husband, and Dolores, with a sense of despair, and a sort of expectation that she should be deprived of all her treasures on one plea or another, gave up the keys.
Mrs. Halfpenny then observed that the frock which had been worn for the last two days on the railway, and evening and morning, needed a better brushing and setting to rights than she had had time to give it. She had better take out another. Which box were her frocks in?
Dolores expected her heartless relations to insist on her leaving off her mourning, and she knew she ought to struggle and shed tears over it; but, to tell the truth, she was a good deal tired of her hot and fusty black; and when she had followed Mrs. Halfpenny into a passage where the boxes stood uncorded; and the first dress that came to light was a pretty fresh-looking holland that had been sent home just before the accident, she exclaimed—
‘Oh, let me put that on.’
‘Bless me, miss, it has blue braid, and you in mourning for your poor mamma!’