“Dear, dear!” said Miss Donnithorne, “they’re bigger than mine. Mine are rather small, and yours—you will forgive me, but yours are enormous; they really are. Have you been attended to by a shoemaker?”
“Oh, Hannah gets my boots for me,” I said. “She always has them made to order, as she says they last twice as long; and she always insists on having them made two sizes too large. She says she can’t be troubled by hearing me complain that they are too small.”
“Dear me, child!” said Miss Donnithorne. “Do you know that you aggravate me more each moment?”
“Aggravate you?” I answered.
“Yes. You make something plainer and plainer. There! not a word more at present. But before I go upstairs, do tell me, was it Hannah or yourself who chose that?”
As she spoke she pointed to the red blouse and the brown skirt. She evidently thought of them as a costume, for she did not speak of them in the plural; she spoke of them as “that,” and if ever there was condemnation in a kind voice, it was when she uttered that word.
“It was father who got them at Wallis’s,” I said. “I told him when I was coming to you that my clothes were rather shabby, and he bought them—he chose them himself.”
“Bless him!” said Miss Donnithorne.
She looked at me critically for a minute, and then she burst into a perfect shriek of laughter. I felt inclined to be offended. It had never occurred to me that anybody in all the world could laugh at the Professor; but Miss Donnithorne laughed till the tears rolled down her cheeks.
“Mercy! Mercy me!” she repeated at intervals.