“And they’d scarcely venture to ask her,” said Miss Halliday with satisfaction. “But I wish you wouldn’t say you don’t mean ever to go anywhere, for when the county ladies are home again, there’s no saying but that you may have invitations of quite a different kind.”
Blanche smiled.
“The county ladies didn’t trouble themselves about us much before,” she said. “I can scarcely think it likely they will now, though I certainly hope they will come to us for their bonnets.”
“I’ve not much fear but what they’ll do that,” said Miss Halliday, whose impressionable nature now saw everything on its bright side. “And even more than that, my dear Miss Blanchie, people are ‘funny’—you can’t count upon them. Anything that makes a sensation is the thing nowadays;” for the milliner was, in her way, a shrewd observer of human nature. “And there’s many nice ladies among them too—real ladies—who’d feel with you more truly than such as Mrs Burgess. There’s that sweet Lady Hebe, now!”
A deep sigh from the farther corner of the shop seemed to come in appropriate response to her last words.
“Stasy!” exclaimed Blanche. “What are you sighing so about? I thought you were working up-stairs beside mamma. What is the matter?”
“Oh, a lot of things,” replied Stasy dolefully. “I’m so hot, and I can’t get these beastly flowers to go the way I want them. My fingers seem all thumbs this afternoon.”
“Stasy!” said Blanche again, this time in a tone of reproof. “Is that the way Blissmore young women talk?”
“I’m a Blissmore young woman myself, now,” said Stasy. “So what can you expect?”
“You’re overworking yourself,” said Blanche. “Instead of doing less, now that your classes are over for the holidays, you’re fagging yourself out; and it is really not necessary just now. We got on very well when you only helped us part of the day, didn’t we, Miss Halliday?”