As the man retired, Augusta, in a white cambric frock heavy with tambour-work, tripped in at the door, her diaper pinafore not so clean as it might have been, her hands full of something which she set down on a side table.
“It is past five o’clock, Augusta; where have you been until now? And how came Cicily to send you in to tea with a soiled pinafore?” asked Mrs. Ashton, with the quiet dignity which seldom relaxed.
“Is it? I did not hear the clock strike, I was so busy; and Cicily has not seen my pinafore,” was Augusta’s light consecutive reply.
“So busy!—Cicily not seen you!” her mother exclaimed in surprise. “Let me look at your hands. I am shocked, Augusta! What would Mrs. Broadbent say?” (The hands were worse than the pinafore.) “Have I not told you repeatedly that ‘cleanliness is next to godliness?’ Go to Cicily and be washed immediately, or you can have no tea.”
Augusta pouted.
“Must I, papa?”
The management of this child was the only point on which Mr. and Mrs. Ashton differed.
“Well, my dear, your mamma says so; but I think for this once it may be overlooked, if you will be more careful another time,” said he, willing to excuse and temporise.
“‘Only this once,’ William, ‘is the parent of thrice,’” responded Mrs. Ashton, gravely, as she poured out the tea, giving something like milk-and-water to Miss Augusta. “You will spoil that child; and if you spoil her to-day, she will spoil herself to-morrow. However, as you are inclined to tolerate that which I think disrespectful to us, and wanting in self-respect on the child’s part, I can say no more.”