“I only hope so, Miss Pimpernell,” sighed Lady Dasher; “but appearances, you know, are so deceitful sometimes.”
“Ah!” ejaculated Miss Spight, “handsome is as handsome does! We’ll see them by and by in their true colours; new brooms, Lady Dasher, sweep clean. Ah!”
There was a world in that “ah!”
“Well,” said little Miss Pimpernell, in her staunch good-nature, “I think it is best to be charitable and take people as we find them. I have seen a good deal of the Clydes during the month they have been here and like them very much. But you will have an opportunity of judging for yourself, Frank, as Minnie Clyde promised me to come down to-day and help us with the decorations.”
“She’s a very nice-looking girl,” said the curate.
“Do you really think her pretty?” asked Bessie Dasher. One could detect a slight tone of dissatisfaction in her voice, and she spoke with a decided pout.
“Well, perhaps she’s not exactly pretty,” said Mr Mawley, diplomatically; “but nice-looking, at all events—that was the word I used, Miss Bessie.”
“But she dresses so plainly!” said Lizzie Dangler.
“I call her quite a dowdthy!” lisped Baby Blake.
“And I say she’s very nice!” said Seraphine Dasher, who had none of the petty dislike of her sex to praise another girl that might turn out to be a possible rival.