“Have you any pretty frocks, my dear?” said Lady Haredale, as she rose to go away. “I mean to have some parties, and there will be people here. If his lordship won’t let us go to London, we must amuse ourselves here, mustn’t we? Though I don’t despair of London yet.”
“I don’t know—I’m afraid you wouldn’t think my best dress very pretty, mamma.”
”‘Mamma’—how pretty the old name is on her tongue!”
Amethyst blushed.
“I’m afraid it’s old-fashioned,” she said, “but the Rectory girls at Silverfold say ‘mamma.’ Do we call you ‘mother’?”
“Do you know,” said Lady Haredale, ”‘mamma’ is so old-fashioned that I think it’s quite chic. And very pretty of you; go on—I like it. And never mind the frocks. Of course it’s my place to dress you up and show you off—and I will. I’m glad you’re such a pretty creature.”
She kissed Amethyst lightly as she passed her, and went away, leaving the girl embarrassed by the outspoken praise. But Amethyst knew, or thought she knew, all about her own beauty, and accepted it as one of the facts of life; so she roused herself in a moment, clapped her hands together, and sprang at her sisters—seizing Una round the waist.
“Come! come! let us look at each other, let us find each other out!—How big you all are! Come and tell me what work you are doing, and what you each go in for; let’s have a splendid talk together.”
She pulled Una down beside her on the sofa, and looked smiling into her face. She had not been grown-up so long as not to be quite ready for companionship with these younger girls, and girls came natural to her.
Una looked back wistfully into the laughing eyes. She was as tall as Amethyst, and her still childish dress accentuated the lanky slenderness of her figure, which seemed weighed down by the enormous quantities of reddish brown hair that fell over her shoulders and about her face. Indeed she looked out of health; all the colour in her face was concentrated in her full red lips, and her wide-open eyes were set in very dark circles. She looked, spite of her short frock and her long hair, older than her real age, and as unlike a natural healthy school-girl as the most “intense” and aesthetic taste could desire. Kattern was prettier, and, as Amethyst expressed it to herself, more comfortable-looking, but she had a stupid face; and by far the shrewdest, keenest glances came from Tory’s darker eyes, which had an elfish malice in them, that caused Amethyst mentally to comment on her as “a handful for any teacher.”