“I didn’t buy it at all,” I said.
I felt my cheeks crimsoning. There was a kind of naughty pride in me that would not tell her the truth that Miss Donnithorne had given it to me.
“I suppose your governess, or whoever takes care of you, arranges your clothes,” said Hermione in a careless tone. “Well, it is sweetly pretty, and so becoming! And what nice hair you have!”
“Nice hair?” I responded.
“Why, of course it is nice; it is so thick and such a good colour. It will look very handsome when you have it arranged in the grown-up style.”
“I don’t want to be grown-up,” I said. “I’d like to be a child always—that is, if I could have birthdays all the same.”
“Do you think so much of your birthdays?” said Hermione, leaning up against the window-sill as she spoke, and twiddling with a paper-knife. “I think they’re rather tiresome. I think birthdays are overdone.”
“You wouldn’t if you knew what my birthday was like,” I said.
“Oh, then,” she exclaimed, “you must tell me all about it.”
I was just about to explain, wondering if I could get her to see the vivid picture of the bright day, the presents, the anxious little girl, whose heart had been aching for so many long months just because of this glorious time, when a great gong sounded through the house, and Hermione said, “Oh! we can’t talk at present; it is dinner-time. Come along, Rachel; come downstairs.”