Blanche glanced up at the good woman’s headgear with some trepidation. She felt rather caught in her own trap, for Lady Harriot’s bonnets were remarkable, to say the least. Like many stout, elderly ladies, she loved bright colours, and was by no means amenable to her milliners suggestions, and Blanche’s misgivings were great as to the desirability of Lady Harriot in the shape of an advertisement.
An amusing consultation followed. Blanche would have liked to summon Stasy to her aid, but she dared not.
“What would happen,” she asked herself, “if Stasy made fun of the old woman to her face? I couldn’t keep my gravity, even if Lady Harriot didn’t find it out.”
And probably her own tact and powers of persuasion were far more effectual than Stasy’s rather despotic decisions on all questions of taste or arrangement.
And Lady Harriot departed in immense satisfaction, firmly convinced that the bonnet was to owe its success to her own suggestions, and that Blanche Derwent was really “a sensible girl, with no nonsense about her.”
“And really very pretty,” she added to herself. “I must call on their mother the next time I am in the town, and I mustn’t forget to speak about them everywhere. I do hope, for their sakes as well as my own, that she’ll remember all I said about the bonnet.”
Two or three days later saw her again at Miss Halliday’s. The bonnet was ready, and this time Stasy was with her sister, having faithfully promised to behave with immaculate propriety. Blanche’s face was very grave as she lifted out her handiwork—or more strictly speaking, Stasy’s, for it was the young girls clever fingers that were usually entrusted with orders of special importance—out of its nest of tissue-paper, and held it up for their visitors inspection.
Out came Lady Harriot’s pince-nez.
“Very nice, very nice indeed, so far as I can tell before trying it on. I will do so at once.” And she proceeded to divest herself of the bonnet she had on, a creation which Stasy’s eyes took in with silent horror.
“Stasy!” said Blanche, when the new erection was placed on Lady Harriot’s head, and there was a decided touch of triumph in her tone.