"So you didn't particularly like Mrs. Van Horn?"
Opposite Neighbours.
"I have seen all I want to see."
"No," replied Letty, "I did not; and I will tell you why. I went with Agnes to call on her,—as was only civil, you know, and I dressed myself all in my best, to do honour to my first call. Well, we got in, and were taken into the parlour, which is very handsomely furnished,—only so crowded that there is no room to turn round. Presently the lady came sailing in, in a very gracious and polite way. She is really very pretty;—I will say that for her.
"She was not backward to enter into conversation. She didn't know how she should like Myrtle Street,—it was rather out of the way of her acquaintances. Most of the people she visited lived in Clay Avenue and Webster Park. She didn't seem to have any place to run into just when she liked, as she did into Dalton's and Trescott's. You may imagine I opened my eyes a little at this; but I said nothing, and she went on. The Dalton girls, she said, were her most particular friends; they were just as intimate as sisters; and Bessie Dalton said she didn't know what they should do without her. As for Kate Trescott, she had cried like a child; and Mrs. Trescott said, 'Really, Mrs. Van Horn, I don't see but you will have to take Kate to board;' and truly she believed Kate loved her better than her own mother. And so she ran on about all sorts of fashionable people, calling them by their Christian names and by nicknames,—a great deal more familiarly than I should speak of Mrs. De Witt to a stranger."
"That was bad taste," said John, as Letty paused, rather out of breath. "But I don't see that it could be called any thing worse: could it?"
"But, John, it isn't true. Haven't I opened the door at Mrs. Trescott's for three years, ever since Davis went away? And shouldn't I be likely to know it, if she had been so intimate there as she says? And I don't believe it's any more true of the Daltons."
"She may have become intimate with them since you came away."
"Not she! Mrs. Trescott never has such intimacies with any one. It is not her way. I never knew her to be on any but good terms with her neighbours; but none of them were in the habit of running in, in that unceremonious way,—not even the Miss Daltons, who were Miss Catherine's most intimate friends,—and cousins beside.
"Then she told how she went out shopping with Kate Trescott and Bessie Dalton, to buy the very dress she had on, and how Kate had said she liked such a thing as that, because very few people fancied it: it was not a thing that every servant-girl would be getting. (Miss Catherine making such a speech as that!) Then she talked about the style of housekeeping among these grand friends of hers, little thinking whom she had for an auditor;—and certainly she told me some news. She said the Trescotts kept two man-servants all the time; and four girls, and that Bessie Dalton kept a carriage and footman of her own. I am sure I may say that she does not tell the truth; and I believe that a person who will lie about one thing will lie about another. Besides, she told scandalous stories about other people that I don't believe she ever spoke to in her life, as though the circumstances had occurred within her own knowledge."