Matilda and I looked forward with great interest to Miss Arkwright’s arrival. Her name, we learnt, was Eleanor, and she was nearly a year older than Maria.
“She’ll be your friend, I suppose,” I said, a little enviously, in reference to her age.
“Of course,” said Matilda, with dignity. “But you can be with us a good deal,” she was kind enough to add.
I remember quite well how disappointed I felt that I should have so little title to share the newcomer’s friendship.
“If she had only been ten years old, and so come between us,” I thought, “she would have been as much mine as Matilda’s.”
I little thought then what manner of friends we were to be in spite of the five years’ difference in age. Indeed, both Matilda and I were destined to see more of her than we expected. Aunt Theresa and Major Buller came to a sudden resolution to send us also to the school where she was going, though we did not hear of this at first.
Long afterwards, when we were together, Eleanor asked me if I could remember my first impression of her. For our affection’s sake I wish it had been a picturesque one; but truth obliges me to confess that, when our visitor did at last arrive, Matilda and I were chiefly struck by the fact that she wore thick boots, and did not wear crinoline.
And yet, looking back, I have a very clear picture of her in my mind, standing in the passage by her box (a very rough one, very strongly corded, and addressed in the clearest of handwriting), purse in hand, and paying the cabman with perfect self-possession. An upright, quite ladylike, but rather old-fashioned little figure, somewhat quaint from the simplicity of her dress. She had a rather quaint face, too, with a nose slightly turned up, a prominent forehead, a charming mouth, and most beautiful dark eyes. Her hair was rolled under and tied at the top of her head, and it had an odd tendency to go astray about the parting.
This was, perhaps, partly from a trick she seemed to have of doing her hair away from the looking-glass. She stood to do it, and also (on one leg) to put on her shoes and stockings, which amused us. But she was always on her feet, and seemed unhappy if she sat idle. We took her for a walk the morning after her arrival, and walked faster than we had ever walked before to keep pace with our new friend, who strode along in her thick boots and undistended skirts with a step like that of a kilted Highlander.
When we came into the town, however, she was quite willing to pause before the shop-windows, which gave her much entertainment.