“Of course,” said Eira, “nothing could be better, and I really think, though I’m younger than you, Betty, that I understand some things more quickly! Indeed, more than Frances herself does! She has lived so for other people, so entirely putting herself in the background, that I dare say it will be difficult for her to realise such a thing. It will come to her,” she went on sagely, “through friendship, so to say, and anyone can see how Mr Littlewood respects her opinion, and tries to get it on all subjects. He loves talking to her, of that I am certain.”
“And Madeleine is devoted to her,” said Betty, “and she and her brother are firm friends. That must be a good thing. But, O Eira, we must make her look very, very nice the night she dines there.”
“I’m sure she will,” said Eira. “I really think I’ve got everything about her dress quite settled in my head, though there are a few points we had better not come upon to her till the last minute. The thing for her hair that we’ve ordered, she won’t be able to refuse it when she sees that we’ve actually got it. O Betty, what should we have done with all this happening but for Mrs Ramsay’s present, for you see now that we are going too, or half going anyway, we couldn’t have done without our new shoes and gloves and sashes.”
Betty looked up anxiously.
“You’ve been thinking it all over already, I see,” she said. “You do think our best evening dresses—the new white nun’s veiling ones, I mean—will do? Of course they are perfectly clean, we’ve never worn them since we’ve turned them into evening dresses, and we took such care of them last summer!”
“Oh dear, yes, they’ll be all right,” said Eira reassuringly. “Thanks, of course, to the blue sashes.” Then, with a little laugh—“Especially,” she added, “as Mrs Littlewood thinks we are only eighteen and nineteen.”
The eventful day arrived. Fortunately on all accounts, looks included, the weather was mild, and Lady Emma, with unwonted maternal solicitude, had told her daughters they were not to think of dressing without fires in their rooms. And Frances’ appearance, thanks to her two devoted tire-women, when she joined her parents in the drawing-room—where Mr Morion was already fuming, ten minutes before the time, at the anticipated unpunctuality of the fly-driver—was in itself a reward to her mother for this same unusual amount of motherly concern.
“You do look very nice, indeed,” she exclaimed, with a little rush of surprise at her own enthusiasm. “Look at her, George,” on which Mr Morion condescended to turn in his daughter’s direction.
“Very nice,” he murmured, as without entering into detail he took in the general impression of her tall, well-proportioned figure, which it would have been difficult to disguise by even the least “well-cut” of draperies. As it was, the prettily shimmering black gauze, broken only by a large bunch of violets at her waist, was unexceptionable in the almost classic of its long, straight folds, and the lovely fair hair in which glistened the little coronal of fairy plumes, which Eira’s quick eyes had picked out in a fashion plate and ordered forthwith, made up a whole which a father would have been almost inhuman not to feel proud of.
“Good-night, dears,” whispered Frances to her sisters, as she followed her mother to the fly, which, after all, had appeared to the moment. “Good-night for the time being, I mean. If you only take half as much pains about yourselves as you have done about me, papa will have reason to be pleased.”