For a minute or two she gazes enraptured at herself, then she rushes up the stairs, two steps at a time, like a tomboy, and bursts like a whirlwind into what is called Baby’s school-room.
Baby has for some time given up instructive books for more refreshing waters of literature in the shape of French romances; but she still clings, with the small amount of tenacity there is in her nature, to the old ink-stained table and hard chairs, in whose company she tottled up four and four, and invariably made them nine, and wept bitter tears over the dry food provided for her mind by Miss Jenkinson, a staid sanctimonious old spinster that Lady Beranger had picked up out of the Guardian, and who, for twenty pounds a year and her laundress, agreed to the herculean task of bringing up the youngest Miss Beranger in the way she should go, so that when she was old she would not depart from it.
Alas! Miss Jenkinson’s counsels have fallen on stony ground, for Baby is the biggest young reprobate that ever danced through life in kittenish glee and kittenish mischief.
The school-room, now that Miss Jenkinson is gone, probably through worry, to a premature grave, is used as a sort of omnium gatherum for all the Miss Berangers, and here they gather usually when not en toilette and en evidence.
“Look at me,” cries Trixy in a shrill voice, “and admire me.”
And jumping on to the centre of the table she stands with a half-conscious, half-comical expression on her face that elicits a burst of laughter from the other three.
“How can old Stubbs make such a fool of himself? He must know you are only marrying him for those things!” Gabrielle says contemptuously.
Trixy takes no notice. Gabrielle is not a pet or a pal of hers, and Gabrielle’s wits are too sharp for her.
“I say, Zai, what wouldn’t you give for such beauties as these?”
“Nothing! I don’t care a bit for jewels, and I wouldn’t accept such costly gifts from a man I did not care about for anything,” Zai answers quietly, going on with her drawing.