Edith sighed deeply as she thought how superficial their education had been, but she said rather slyly to Annie, "But you are engaged. I think your husband will veto the music-teaching."
"Oh, well," said Annie, laughing, "Walter may fail, or get sick, or something may happen. So you see we shouldn't have to go to the poor-house. Besides, there's a sort of satisfaction in knowing one thing pretty well. But the half is not told you, and I suppose you will think father and mother queer people; indeed, most of our friends do. For mother has had a milliner come to the house, and a dressmaker, and a hair-dresser, and whatever we have any knack at she has made us learn well, some one thing, and some another. Wouldn't I like to dress your long hair!" continued the light-hearted girl. "I would make you so bewitching that you would break a dozen hearts in one evening. Then mother has taught us how to cook, and to make bread and cake and preserves, and Ella and I have to take turns in keeping house, and marketing, and keeping account of the living expenses. The rest of the girls are at school yet. Mother says she is not going to palm off any frauds in her daughters when they get married; and if we only turn out half as good as she is, our husbands will be lucky men, if I do say it; and if all of us don't get any, we can take care of ourselves. Father has been holding you up as an example of what a girl can do, if she has to make her own way in the world."
And the sprightly, but sensible, girl would have rattled on indefinitely, had not Edith fled to her room in an uncontrollable rush of sorrow over the sad, sad, "It might have been."
One afternoon Annie came into Edith's room, saying, "I am going to dress your hair. Yes, I will—now don't say a word, I want to. We expect two or three friends in—one you'll be glad to see. No, I won't tell you who it is. It's a surprise." And she flew at Edith's head, pulled out the hairpins, and went to work with a dexterity and rapidity that did credit to her training. In a little while she had crowned Edith with nature's most exquisite coronet.
A cloud of care seemed to rest on Mr. Hart's brow as they entered the dining-room, but he banished it instantly, and with the quaint, stately gallantry of the old school, pretended to be deeply smitten with Edith's loveliness. And so lovely she appeared that their eyes continually returned, and rested admiringly on her, till at last the blushing girl remonstrated:
"You all keep looking at me so that I feel as if I were the dessert, and you were going to eat me up pretty soon."
"I speak for the biggest bite," cried Mr. Hart, and they laughed at her and petted her so that she said:
"I feel as if I had known you all ten years."
But ever and anon, Edith saw traces of the cloud of care that she had noticed at first. And so did Mrs. Hart, for she said:
"You have been a little anxious about business lately. Is there anything new?"