"So I have, and more than one," she replied, laughing, as she continued her flight upward.
Mary's fairies were Neatness, Quickness, Order, and Method. Therefore in very few minutes more than the time she had named she presented herself in the drawing-room ready for her drive.
All fear that domestic duties would make Mrs. Armstrong's daughter coarse or unrefined must have vanished at her appearance. She was simply attired in a pale violet silk dress and cape, with close-fitting gloves, lace collar and cuffs, and a broad-brimmed hat partly concealing her face, but not the profusion of auburn ringlets that fell around her shoulders.
"How like you grow to your mother, my dear," said her aunt, as Mary, with the softness and refinement of that mother's manner, advanced to welcome her. And as she rose to accompany her niece to the carriage she said to herself, "Well, perhaps after all Edward is right—a woman is none the worse for understanding the management of household duties."
One evening Mary was present at a family dinner-party at her uncle Sir James Elston's house in Portland Place. Very little had been said to the old sailor about what Mrs. Armstrong's sisters called the peculiar manner in which Edward Armstrong was educating his daughter, but that little had been met by him with a remark that silenced them—
"Making his girl domestic, is he? Wise man, wise man; that's all I can say."
On this family gathering, Mary, who was now in her sixteenth year, gave sufficient proof that learning to be domestic had not prevented her from becoming accomplished. A young French lady was present with whom Mary conversed with ease in her own tongue.
"You speak with a pure accent, mademoiselle," said the young lady; "have you resided in France?"
"No," was the reply; "but mamma was at school in Paris for years, and she has spoken French to me from my infancy."
In the course of the evening Mary was called upon to accompany her aunt Herbert in a duet for the harp and piano, and in this she succeeded so well as to gain approbation from every one present.