“She is much better than I expected, and I am glad for the sake of my sister’s memory; had she been at all like your wicked insinuations I certainly should have died with grief.”
And then there followed another criticism upon Edith’s face, and form, and manners, and style, and antecedents,—the critics lingering longest over the latter, and insisting that Godfrey should be truthful and tell them what he knew. But Godfrey didn’t know anything except that she had once been a governess and was afterward the companion of their Aunt Sinclair, who esteemed her highly and was anxious for the match.
“Has she no relatives? Who are the Lyles?” Julia asked, and Godfrey answered:
“I don’t know who the Lyles are, I am sure. Her mother has been married twice, and is now a Mrs. Barrett, who takes lodgers in London,—a highly respectable looking woman, with puffs of gray hair. She is not at all like her daughter, and I don’t believe father fancied her much. That’s all I know; but I’ll tell you where you can get any information you wish concerning your step-grandmother. That Mrs. Rogers at the cottage,—my tenant, you know,—lodged with her for some months. Cultivate her a spell if you are anxious about Mrs. Schuyler’s pedigree.”
“Oh, yes,” Alice said; “we have cultivated her, and she is to do some plain sewing for me. Emma and I went down there yesterday and waited till she came home with a jug of molasses in one hand and a basket of eggs in the other, and that red-haired girl, her daughter, asked me to render some English into French for her. The idea of such people studying French! Girls, Godfrey thinks she’s a beauty; and don’t you believe, she presumed to lecture him for slang on the ship, and he kissed her!”
“Kissed whom,—Mrs. Rogers?” Julia asked in dismay, while Alice replied:
“No, the daughter, Gertie Rogers—the girl I told you about when I came home last night. She wears her hair down her back, and braids it up in tags at night and lets it out in the morning, to give it that wavy, rippling appearance.”
“No, she doesn’t!” Godfrey exclaimed. “It’s a natural wave. I’ll swear to that; for I saw her once brought on deck early in the morning, as sick as she could be, and I tell you it was just the same; and it is not red, either,—it is a beautiful auburn, with a shade of gold in it; and, as father says, she has the most remarkable face, for a child, that I ever saw.”
“Really, Godfrey, you are quite her champion. You’ll want us to invite her here next,” Julia said, while Emma ventured to remark:
“Anyway, she is beautiful; and do you know, I think there is a look in her face or eyes like Mrs. Schuyler. I thought of it to-night when we were at dinner.”