“You leave them alone, Miss Weston,” said Kitty; “don’t say a word, and you’ll see what will happen. Mr. Dodd is a great friend of mine, but I have to be careful with him. You know he’s as rich—as rich as Crœsus, Miss Weston, and he is so proud of Anne and Grace! When he sees the King cut on them he won’t like it; and then I intend to explain the reason. I’ll tell him that the woman doesn’t know how to dressmake, and that you have a proper cut, and of course he has got to pay for it. You’ll see you’ll get heaps of orders next term.”
“Well, miss, I ’ope so. If I do, well and good; but if I don’t, I’ll ’ave to hup and explain the deception I was forced to practise.”
“Oh you wouldn’t do that, dear Miss Weston; it would ruin me for ever and ever.”
“I’ve no wish to ruin you, miss, but a poor woman must live.”
Accordingly, during the Easter holidays, Kitty worked the subject of the Dodds’ dress for all she was worth. She did it with her usual cleverness, not appearing to have anything to say to it, but really having her little fingers in the pie. Dodd couldn’t make out what ailed Anne, nor why Grace looked so dowdy, with her dress sagging up in front and going down in a hideous little miniature train at the back.
“There’s Kitty now,” he said to his wife, “as neat as a picter, and as smart as you please, and her dress bought for her by that poor aunt, who isn’t rich at all, and there are my lasses, with their father rolling in money—yes, that’s the word for it, Mary Anne—rolling in money, and they looking so queer and shapeless. I’m discouraged about them, I am really.”
“You see, dear,” said the wife, “you would send them to a second-rate dressmaker.”
“I!” roared the angry man. “I send my girls to any one second-rate! You must be dreaming, duckydums.”
“Well, John, you said they were not to go to Miss Weston, and there’s only Miss King in the place besides.”
“Oh, that Weston woman, her charges were robbery.”