"Only a bit of one," and she gave him a somewhat cynical account of her little scullery-maid.
"I withdraw my remark," he said gravely. "You are not throwing yourself away. Would that we were all using ourselves to as much purpose!"
"Don't make me feel myself more of a fool than I do already."
"Fool! I was wishing there were a few more fools in the place to appreciate you—Ruskin for one!"
"I did try to comfort myself with recollections of Ruskin," she said, with a suspicion of tears in her laughter; "but I could only think of the bit about the crossing-sweeper and the hat with the feather."
He smiled. "You do Ruskin too much honour when you judge him by an isolated quotation," he said. "I thought that distinction was reserved for the Bible."
"But that is only the beginning of the story," said Mona. "I have had several orders since for similar bonnets—more from the mothers than from the girls themselves, I am sorry to say,—and among them the one that suggested the sketch. Have you ever seen Colonel Lawrence's quaint old housekeeper up at the wood?"
"Oh yes. Everybody knows the Colonel's Jenny."
"Her daughter went away to service some time ago, and came home to visit her mother the other day, with all her wages on her back, as Jenny expressed it,—such a poor, little, rosy-cheeked, tawdry bit of humanity! The mother marched her off to me in high dudgeon, and ordered a bonnet 'like Polly's at the Towers'; and that is exactly how the poor child looked when she tried it on. I could have found it in my heart to beg her off myself. Talk of breaking in a butterfly!"
"Yes," he said. "One is inclined to think that human butterflies should be allowed to be butterflies—till one sees them too near the candle!"