“Good gracious!” exclaimed Prudence, “I must run and dress.”
She hastily opened the door of her room, but the frisky Toutou was too quick for her. He darted forward and almost upset her in his eagerness to get out.
“How lively he is!” said Prudence in admiration. “Just like a puppy! How did you get him home if he danced about like this?”
“It was a troublesome business I assure you,” answered Miss Augusta, who was too much interested and excited to sulk long with her sister. “He jumped out of my arms and frisked up and down the carriage in the liveliest way, so that I had the greatest difficulty in catching him again. He was in the wildest state of delight you can imagine, barked and leaped on all the passengers, just fancy, and he has been so rheumatic for years! I could scarcely hold him under my cloak. He sprang out of my arms once and very nearly broke the bottle I was carrying.”
“How dreadful! What on earth should we have done if he had smashed it.”
“Well, fortunately he didn’t,” said Miss Augusta shortly, refusing to contemplate such a calamity.
CHAPTER VI.
AN ACCIDENT AND ITS RESULTS.
With ill-concealed impatience did Miss Semaphore await her usual hour for retiring. With a sense of agreeable expectancy did she at last seat herself in her room before the looking-glass and proceed to brush out her scanty tresses. In the open drawer of the table reposed the abundant coils that graced by day the back of her head. As she brushed, she reflected that expensive though the Water of Youth undoubtedly was, it would at any rate spare her buying “Jetoline,” her favourite dye, for many years to come. Women, guilty of a great extravagance, always find comfort in meditating small economies.
Her thoughts next turned to Toutou, and his marvellous recovery of vigour and gaiety. She wondered if her spirits would become as light as his. As a girl she had not been particularly lively, but she hoped in her second girlhood her sprightlier and more freakish qualities might develop.
While thus reflecting, her door opened, and in came Miss Prudence to bid her good-night. Prudence, as we have said, was a large, soft woman, whose kindly, if feeble, nature and unruffled temper tended to preserve her youthful roundness. In her white combing jacket, her cheeks flushed, and her still abundant nut-brown hair falling on her shoulders, she seemed to her sister to look particularly young. To be sure, there was ten years difference or more in their ages, and Miss Semaphore was always accustomed to look on Prudence as a mere girl, but even allowing for this, to-night she might have passed for thirty.