“As long as I like—as long as I find it convenient,” replied the boy; “but now, I tell you what; I am quiet mostly, not because I care a button for all their threats, but because I promised Mrs. Dudley I would—there now!”
“You are a curiosity,” remarked Bessie.
“Not so much of one as you are. I don’t wear frizzle-gigs of things in my hair; I don’t live in a steel cage; I don’t screw myself in round the waist and walk this way,” added Master Marsden, marching up and down the room in a style which he firmly believed to be an exact imitation of Bessie. “I don’t look from under my parasol—so! and make up my face when anybody is in the room I want to think well of me; I don’t wear kicking straps and dress improvers to make my petticoats stick out—like that;” and Master Marsden pulled out his knickerbockers to their fullest width, and treated society to another representation of Bessie “sailing across a room.”
If every one belonging to her had been dying at that moment, Bessie could not have refrained from laughing; and in this mirth her cousins joined.
“I suppose Harry thinks that is holding the mirror up to nature,” said Lucy Dudley, at length.
“No, Harry does not,” retorted the young gentleman; “he thinks it is holding the mirror up to art.”
“I am art, then, am I?” inquired Bessie; and Harry nodded assent.
“Well,” she said, “since it seems you have engaged this room for your performances, I will go upstairs and see Heather.”
“Had not I better go up first, and tell her?” suggested Agnes.
“Oh no,” answered Bessie; “good wine, you know, needs no bush;” and with that she left the apartment, and ascended to the sick chamber, at the threshold of which she paused for a moment irresolute.