“Good-night; I hope you’ll learn and inwardly digest your lesson, my child,” he said, going out upon the gravel.
But Nellie sprang to her feet, and called after him all down the path till he reached the gate, “Candles, sardines, needles and pins, size nine gloves! ask her what she blacks her eyebrows with!”
Meg was looking troubled. She was sitting on the lounge he had quitted, and her fair brows were knitted beneath the soft, straying hair.
“Nell dear, it is vulgar,” she said, “and it is small. I don’t know where the distinction of ladies comes in if we say things like that. Perhaps the little dressmaker really wouldn’t.”
[39]
]“But we are ladies,” Miss Elinor said, her small head in the air,—“nothing can alter that. Our father is a gentleman, our mother was a lady—we are ladies.”
“Not if we act like servant girls,” Meg said quietly. “If you found a bit of glass under all the conditions you’d expect to find a diamond, and yet it didn’t shine like a diamond, then it wouldn’t be a diamond, would it?”
“Now don’t get elder-sistery and moralous,” said Nell; albeit she was a trifle ashamed, for she prided herself certainly upon being a little lady to her boot toes. “Meg, I thought of doing up that white crepon Esther gave me into a kind of evening dress, just for little evenings, you know, at the Baileys or Courtneys, or anywhere, or when we have people here. Would you make the body as a blouse with big frills over the shoulders, or with a yoke and gathered into the waist? The blouse way would be easier, for there’s no lining, you know.”
“Oh, the blouse, I think,” Meg said, half abstractedly. “Do you know if Poppet has gone to bed, Nell? I don’t think I saw her come in, and her cough was bad last night.”
“I don’t know. Meg, I’ll give you half-a-crown for that silver belt of yours; I’ve got a little money [40] ]left in my allowance yet, and you never wear it. Half-a-crown would buy you a new book, or one of those burnt straw sailor-hats, and the belt would look lovely with the white dress.” The younger girl looked persuasively at the elder.
“But I gave seven-and-sixpence for it,” Meg objected, “and it’s nearly new.”