“Yes, you are,” said Marie, smoothing her own dark hair. “You are very nice, and pretty, and sweet, and when I’m married and away from this wicked old poverty-stricken workhouse, you shall come and live with me.”
“Shall I, Marie?” cried the girl, with the eagerness of a child.
“Yes, dear; and you shall have a handsome husband of your own.”
Ruth laughed merrily.
“What should I do with a husband?”
“Hold your tongue, Rie, and don’t stuff the child’s head with such nonsense.”
“Child, indeed! why, she is only a year younger than I. Oh! it has been abominable; we have been treated like babies, and I feel sometimes now as if I were only a little girl. But only wait.”
“Yes,” cried Clotilde with a curious laugh, “only wait.”
“Someone coming,” whispered Ruth, leaping up from the floor where she had been listening, and the childlike obedience to the stern authority in which they had been trained resumed its sway.
Clotilde bounded to the piano, and began to practise a singing lesson, her rich contralto voice rising and falling as she ran up an arpeggio, trying to make it accord with five notes struck together out of tune; Marie darted to a chair, and snatched up a quill pen, inked her forefinger, and bent over a partly written exercise on composition—a letter addressed to a lady of title, to be written in the style of Steele; and Ruth snatched up a piece of needlework, and began to sew. Then the door opened, and Markes, the nurse, appeared.