"Pray don't teaze people about my frocks, auntie. If you can't find something more interesting to talk about, we had better go away," said Suzette, with a pettishness which was quite unlike her; but it must be owned that to be made the object of a public attack in feminine convocation was somewhat exasperating.
Mrs. Mornington was not to be put down. She went on talking of frocks, though one of the daughters of the house carried Suzette off to the garden—an act of real Christian charity, if she had not spoilt her good work by beginning to talk of Suzette's lover.
"I can quite fancy your aunt must be rather boring sometimes," she said. "But do tell me about Mr. Carew. I thought him so nice the other day at the flower-show, when you introduced him to me."
"What can I tell you about him? You have seen him—and I am glad you thought him nice."
"Yes; but one wants to know more. One wants to know what he is like—from your point of view."
"But how could you see him from my point of view? That's impossible."
"True! A casual acquaintance could never see him as he appears to you—to whom he is all the world," said the Canon's daughter, who was young and romantic, having lived upon church music and Coventry Patmore's poetry.
"There's my aunt showing them patterns of my frocks!" exclaimed Suzette, irritably, glancing in at the drawing-room, where Mrs. Mornington sat, the centre of a little group, handing scraps of stuff out of her reticule.
The scraps were being passed round and peered at and pulled about by everybody, with a meditative and admiring air. An African savage, seeing the group, would have supposed that some act of sortilege was being performed.
"It is rather an ordeal being married," said the Canon's daughter, thinking sadly of a certain undergraduate who was down-hearted about his divinity exam., and upon whose achieving deacon's orders within a reasonable time depended the young lady's matrimonial prospects.