"I do not exactly know, for Eliza has not written to me herself; but I half believe that it is better for me to do without a maid; I feel ever so much more independent, although naturally I do miss Eliza."
Mrs. Barlow smiled at the philosophic tone which
Julia had assumed, for she had quietly made her own observations on the state of Julia's mind when at the very beginning of her stay in Boston Eliza had been called away.
"Another year you may need somebody, even if you cannot have Eliza. The older a girl grows the more stitches there are to be taken for her, and next season you will have less time than at present to do things for yourself."
"But I like this feeling of independence, or rather I like to feel that I have to depend almost entirely on myself; I am just so much more of a person than I should be if I had Eliza to wait on me constantly, as I used to."
"A certain amount of independence in a young girl is a good thing," replied Mrs. Barlow, "and I am glad that yours takes a somewhat different form from Brenda's. I wonder, for example, where she is this afternoon. She had an appointment at her dressmaker's, but when I went there to make a suggestion or two about her new coat, they told me that she had not been there, and here it is near dinner-time with no sign of Brenda. Probably she is with Belle or some of the girls, but still I do not like her going off in this way."
While Mrs. Barlow was speaking Julia hoped that she would not ask her if she had seen Brenda, and fortunately she did not do so. To be sure, Julia had nothing special to tell, and indeed had not her aunt spoken of the broken appointment at the dressmaker's, she might have mentioned the glimpse of Brenda that she had had down town, but now she began to suspect that something was wrong, at least it was strange that Brenda should have deceived her mother about the dressmaking appointment. The dressmaker's rooms were not down town, so that it was not this appointment that had taken her to the neighborhood of Winter street.
"But where have you been, yourself, this afternoon, Julia?" asked Mrs. Barlow; and Julia told her of her visit to the Rosas, and of the plans that Miss South had suggested for raising them out of their present trouble. "I am afraid that Brenda won't agree with her," she said, "for she has the idea that the one thing needful is to give Mrs. Rosa a large sum of money to spend just as she likes."
"Brenda isn't very practical," replied Mrs. Barlow. "I only wish that she had your common sense; or if she were more like Agnes, it would be better, for although Agnes is an artist, she is decidedly practical."
"Oh, Brenda is so much younger," said Julia apologetically.