“They are real tucks,” I stoutly asserted.
“No, they’re not. They’re cut on the bias, and laid on to imitate tucks,” Matilda repeated. I think she was not sorry there should be some weak point in the fashionable mourning in which she did not share.
I turned to Mr. George, as usual.
“Aren’t they real tucks, Mr. George?”
But Mr. George had a strange look on his face which puzzled and disconcerted me. He only said, “Good heavens!” And all my after efforts were vain to find out what he meant, and why he looked in that strange manner.
Little things that puzzle one in childhood remain long in one’s memory. For years I puzzled over that look of Mr. George’s, and the remembrance never was a pleasant one. It chilled my enthusiasm for my new dress at the time, and made me feel inclined to cry. I think I have lived to understand it.
But I was not insensible of my great loss, though I took pride in my fashionable mourning. I do not think I much connected the two in my mind. I did not talk about my father to any one but Mr. George, but at night I often lay awake and cried about him. This habit certainly affected my health, and I had become a very thin, weak child when the home voyage came to restore my strength.
By the time we reached Riflebury, my fashionable new dress was neither new nor fashionable. It was then that Mrs. Minchin ferreted out a dressmaker whom Mrs. St. Quentin employed, and I was put under her hands.
The little Bullers’ things were “made in the house,” after the pattern of mine.
“And one sees the fashion-book, and gets a few hints,” said Mrs. Buller.