Ida's preparations for departure were not elaborate. Her scanty wardrobe had been put in the neatest possible order. A few hours sufficed for packing trunk and bonnet-box. On the last afternoon Mrs. Palliser came to her highly elated, and proposed a walk to Dieppe, and a drive home in the diligence which left the Market Place at five o'clock.
'I am going to give you a new hat,' she said, triumphantly. 'You must have a new hat.'
'But, dear mamma, I know you can't afford it.'
'I will afford it, Ida. You will have to go to church at Kingthorpe'—Mrs. Palliser regarded church-going as an oppressive condition of prosperous respectability. One of the few privileges of being hard up and quite out of society was that one need not go to church—'and I should like you to appear like a lady. You owe it to your pa and I. A hat you must 'ave. I can pay for it out of the housekeeping money, and your pa will never know the difference.'
'No, mamma, but you and Vernon will have to pinch for it,' said Ida, knowing that there was positively no margin to that household's narrow means of existence.
'A little pinching won't hurt us. Vernie is as bilious as he can be; he eats too many compots and little fours. I shall keep him to plain bread and butter for a bit, and it will do him a world of good. There's no use talking, Ida, I mean you to 'ave a 'at; and if you won't come and choose it I must choose it myself,' concluded the little woman, dropping more aspirates as she grew more excited.
So mother and daughter walked to Dieppe in the dull November afternoon, Vernon trudging sturdily by his sister's side. They bought the hat, a gray felt with partridge plumage, which became Ida's rich dark bloom to perfection; and then they went to the Cathedral, and knelt in the dusky aisle, and heard the solemn melody of the organ, and the subdued voices of the choir, in the plaintive music of Vesper Psalms, monotonous somewhat, but with a sweet soothing influence, music that inspired gentle thoughts.
Then they went back to the Market-Place, and were in time to get good places on the banquette of the diligence, before the big white Norman horses trotted and ambled noisily along the stony street.
Ida left Dieppe late on the following evening, by the same steamer that had brought her from Newhaven. The British stewardess recognised her.
'Why, you was only across the other day, miss!' she said; 'what a gad-about you must be!'