'Wear Miss Clay's hat! Oh Miss Horatia! you can never do such a thing,' protested the old nurse.
'Why not?' inquired Horatia, as she pirouetted before the cheval-glass, admiring the pretty feather toque. 'It's the very thing for rinking, and so is this boa. Look how queerly it is made, with chiffon twined in; that's what makes it so becoming. Clothes make a lot of difference, Nanny. I don't look half so ugly with these on.'
'You never look ugly, Miss Horatia, and you look "distangy" whatever you put on, so there's no need for you to put on other folk's clothes to look nice; the mistress wouldn't like it at all, I'm sure,' said Nancy.
'I don't think she'd mind, Nanny, and I should vex Sarah if I refused, and that's just what I don't want to do,' said Horatia.
'Well, they do suit you, and if you've a fancy for them, and to please Miss Clay, perhaps you'd better; specially if she's got a temper anything like her father's, for they say he's fairly hated at the mills,' said Nancy.
Nancy did not like Mr Clay, and not all his wealth could make her think him a fit host for her young lady; and, indeed, after his explosion in the back-yard she had taken it upon herself to write to Lady Grace Cunningham, and said: 'I feel sure, my lady, that if you knew the people we are with, you would never let us stay; for not but what this is a palace fit for a king, and we eat like fighting-cocks. Still, they are not what I've been used to since I've been in your service, and his language is shocking, except when in Miss Horatia'a presence, which she has a wonderful influence over him, every one says.' In spite of the grammar of this letter being somewhat involved, Nancy's meaning and opinions were pretty clear, and Lady Grace Cunningham took it to her husband, who had a character rather like Horatia's.
'Let the child stay where she is; it will do her all the good in the world, as, you see, she is evidently doing good—taming this boor, by all accounts. Nancy is a rank old Tory, and turns up her nose at any one not born in the purple. Times have changed, as Nancy will find out one day.'
So Lady Grace Cunningham did not recall them, but only wrote and told Horatia that she must shorten her visit if she was not happy.
'I'm enjoying myself immensely. I never met kinder people,' Horatia wrote back. And so she stayed on; and as Nancy was living, as she expressed it, like a fighting-cock, she resigned herself very contentedly to her lot, as she resigned herself to Horatia's wearing Sarah's clothes.
Horatia, with very mingled feelings, went down to the motor which was to take them to the barn. She wondered what kind of people would be there. She had an idea that, as the invitations were issued by Mr Clay, they would be his friends or people of his choice, and Horatia looked forward to an afternoon with a very rough and unrefined set of people.