"It's a great pity that their being in mourning will prevent their going to the Easter charity ball," said Mrs. Gibson, plaintively. "I shan't like to take you two girls, if you are not to have any partners. It will put me in such an awkward position. I wish we could join on to the Towers party. That would secure you partners, for they always bring a number of dancing men, who might dance with you after they had done their duty by the ladies of the house. But really everything is so changed since dear Lady Cumnor has been an invalid that, perhaps, they won't go at all."
This Easter ball was a great subject of conversation with Mrs. Gibson. She sometimes spoke of it as her first appearance in society as a bride, though she had been visiting once or twice a week all winter long. Then she shifted her ground, and said she felt so much interest in it, because she would then have the responsibility of introducing both her own and Mr. Gibson's daughter to public notice, though the fact was that pretty nearly every one who was going to this ball had seen the two young ladies—though not their ball dresses—before. But, aping the manners of the aristocracy as far as she knew them, she intended to "bring out" Molly and Cynthia on this occasion, which she regarded in something of the light of a presentation at Court. "They are not out yet," was her favourite excuse when either of them was invited to any house to which she did not wish them to go, or they were invited without her. She even made a difficulty about their "not being out" when Miss Browning—that old friend of the Gibson family—came in one morning to ask the two girls to come to a friendly tea and a round game afterwards; this mild piece of gaiety being designed as an attention to three of Mrs. Goodenough's grandchildren—two young ladies and their schoolboy brother—who were staying on a visit to their grand-mamma.
"You are very kind, Miss Browning, but, you see, I hardly like to let them go—they are not out, you know, till after the Easter ball."
"Till when we are invisible," said Cynthia, always ready with her mockery to exaggerate any pretension of her mother's. "We are so high in rank that our sovereign must give us her sanction before we can play a round game at your house."
Cynthia enjoyed the idea of her own full-grown size and stately gait, as contrasted with that of a meek, half-fledged girl in the nursery; but Miss Browning was half puzzled and half affronted.
"I don't understand it at all. In my days girls went wherever it pleased people to ask them, without this farce of bursting out in all their new fine clothes at some public place. I don't mean but what the gentry took their daughters to York, or Matlock, or Bath, to give them a taste of gay society when they were growing up; and the quality went up to London, and their young ladies were presented to Queen Charlotte, and went to a birthday ball, perhaps. But for us little Hollingford people—why, we knew every child amongst us from the day of its birth; and many a girl of twelve or fourteen have I seen go out to a card-party, and sit quiet at her work, and know how to behave as well as any lady there. There was no talk of 'coming out' in those days for any one under the daughter of a Squire."
"After Easter, Molly and I shall know how to behave at a card-party, but not before," said Cynthia, demurely.
"You're always fond of your quips and your cranks, my dear," said Miss Browning, "and I wouldn't quite answer for your behaviour: you sometimes let your spirits carry you away. But I'm quite sure Molly will be a little lady as she always is, and always was, and I have known her from a babe."
Mrs. Gibson took up arms on behalf of her own daughter, or, rather, she took up arms against Molly's praises.
"I don't think you would have called Molly a lady the other day, Miss Browning, if you had found her where I did: sitting up in a cherry-tree, six feet from the ground at least, I do assure you."