“It’s a very cold day, mums, but I’m quite well.”
Dodd looked up at Anne; his small, brown eyes fixed themselves on her face. He did not know why the memory returned to him at that moment, but he seemed to see again a girl with a scarlet face rushing out of the post-office. There was nothing whatever to connect that face and this letter; nevertheless he got, as he expressed it, “an attack of the fidgets.” He tore open the envelope and spread the sheet of items before him. The girls pretended to take no notice, and Grace, in particular, kept her mother talking on all kinds of matters. Suddenly Dodd, who had thrust out his lower lip and arranged his glasses over his eyes, looked up with a frown.
“I say, Mary Anne, how much used you to pay in the old days for a bit of a muslin rag?”
“A bit of a muslin rag, my dear? I don’t understand.”
“Well, a gown, my dear—a frock—whatever you like to call it.”
“Oh I don’t know,” said Mrs. Dodd; “it would depend, of course, on how it was made and how trimmed, and, of course, prices are very much higher now. Yes, I remember getting a very pretty muslin frock for three guineas, and you thought it a lot of money, old man, at the time, didn’t you?”
“Did I? Did I ever stint you in your clothes? But three guineas versus twelve guineas! Come, fashion or no fashion, that’s a pretty big jump.”
“Oh come, my dears,” said the mother, looking at the two girls, “Miss Weston cannot have charged twelve guineas apiece for those plain muslin frocks. It’s quite impossible, darlings!”
“Look for yourself, my dear, look for yourself. Seeing is believing,” and the angry Dodd flung the bill across the table. “There’s some green finery, which I haven’t seen yet, put down at thirteen guineas each. It makes me sick. And one dozen black silk stockings for each of you at fifteen shillings a pair!”
“We didn’t ask the price, daddy. I’m ever so sorry,” said Grace, in a tremulous voice.