“We don’t see much of you now-a-days, Miss Dorothy,” said Lucy, smiling fondly at her visitor.
“An what mak’ o’ a gown do yo’ ca’ that?” said the mother.
“Oh! this, Mistress Hannah Garside, wife of Benjamin of that ilk, is my riding-habit and to be respected accordingly. It is, I believe, the only one in Holmfirth. Neat, isn’t it?”
“Yo’ look like a lad i’ petticoits. Is it quite decent for a wench?” asked Mrs. Garside, somewhat anxiously.
“Decent! why, it’s the very pink of the latest fashion: the only wear, in fact, though I think I would rather be without the skirt on a windy day. Then there’d be an uplifting of hands and a searching of hearts, if you like.”
Mrs. Garside only looked half-satisfied.
“Yo’r th’ same, an’ yet not th’ same,” she said.
“Not the same! Hannah, why I should hope not indeed, or my good uncle’s money would be sadly wasted, and you know that wilful waste makes woeful want. I know or should know, for Aunt Tinker dins it in my ear every time I buy a new ribbon or a pair of gloves. The same, indeed! Why do you know, Hannah, I’m being finished,” and Dorothy dropped her voice as though she spoke a word of doom.
“Finished?” queried Lucy, “finished?”
“Aye finished, in very sooth. Fashioned, moulded, formed taught carriage and deportment, and several other extras at Miss Holmes’s highly fashionable, strictly select academy for young ladies in Huddersfield, and thither and thence I ride on Beauty every day of the blessed week bar Sundays and missin’s—but that’s an improper word and not to be spoken in genteel society.”