While Lucy was telling her father the story, they were talking it over among themselves; and knowing, in spite of their sympathy, that she presented rather a comical figure, were trying to think of some means by which they might help her to dress herself more like other children. But they did not see exactly how it was to be done, nor did Mrs. Bradford when they consulted her.
“I fear it would not do to offer Lucy clothes, my darlings,” she said: “those she wears, though odd-looking, are good and comfortable; and her father might be offended if we offered her any thing which seemed like charity, or let him know that we do not think her properly dressed.”
“Mamma,” said Bessie, gravely, “do you think a thing is comfortable when it makes a child laughed at?”
“Well, no, dear, perhaps not,” answered Mrs. Bradford, smiling, “and I am very sorry for Lucy. Mrs. Norris and I were saying this morning that we wished we might tell the poor child how to make herself look less like a little old woman, but we thought it would not do to interfere.”
“I’d wish somebody would interfere if it was me,” said Maggie. “It must be most too much to have a father who won’t talk, and who has such very bad taste.”
This was said with so much emphasis, and with such a long-drawn sigh at the end, as if the mere thought of such misfortune were almost too much for Maggie, that every one laughed.
Bessie had less to say about Lucy’s troubles than any of the others; but she thought more of them: for we know how sensitive she herself was to ridicule, and she could not bear to think that Lucy might have to undergo the same trial again.
“Mamma,” she said, coming to her mother’s side that evening, “there are Lucy and her father sitting at the head of those steps, and she is showing him those queer dressing-gown frocks of hers. Could I go and speak to them?”
Mrs. Bradford turned to see if it was a proper place for Bessie to go to, and then gave her permission, thinking that her little girl might possibly see some way to help Lucy, and trusting to her good sense and kind heart not to say any thing that might give offence.
“Maybe they’re not just the right shape,” said the engineer, as Bessie came near; “but I don’t know how you are to better them;” and he turned over and over the two frocks, just like the one Lucy had on, which lay across his knee. “Maybe Dorothy would show you.”