In the midst of some such speculations as these, it happened that nurse accepted a little black shawl from one of the young ladies with unaccountable indifference. There was nothing for it but to suppose that she was now so accustomed to presents that she thought little of them. But on the next Sunday the matter was differently explained. Nurse appeared in a splendid figured brocade, which had been left her by an aunt, and never altered in the fashion, from there being no materials wherewith to make up any part of it afresh. By dint of a double quantity of muslin handkerchief, and of a long and wide muslin apron, tamboured by herself when at school, the peculiarities of the waist were in part hidden, while enough projected on all sides to show what fine, stout fabrics our fathers could weave. The apparition of nurse, thus attired, appeared on the stairs time enough to allow of all the necessary speculation being gone through before church.
"Papa, papa!" cried Lucy, flying about the house to find her father, who was reading his Sunday paper quietly in the back parlour. "Oh, papa!----"
"Well, my dear. But I wish you would not slam the door."
"I thought nurse was behind, and I did not want her to come in. Oh, papa! have you seen nurse?"
"No, my dear. Is her nose growing out of the window, and over hill and dale, like the wonderful nose in the German story that Maria was telling me?"
"No, no! but she does look so odd in that gay gown that she used to show us for a sight; and just after Charlotte gave her a shawl, too,--a shawl with a border of pretty grey and white pattern, on a black ground. She might have worn Charlotte's shawl a little first."
"She will wear it still, I dare say; and perhaps she thinks she has been in black long enough."
Nurse now came in, with a prim and somewhat sentimental expression of countenance, as if thinking that she ought to change her face with her dress, and scarcely knowing how to set about it. Her master's question soon brought back one of her accustomed modes of looking and speaking.
"You are going out for the day, I suppose, nurse?"
"Going out, sir! where should I go to? It is for those who have friends and relations to go out visiting; and I have none, except just the Taylors and the Aytons, and old Mr. Martin, and Sukey Street, and a few more. You seem to think I must be always wanting to go out visiting, sir."