“Ball-dresses sound something very grand, but a plain white tarlatan is not dear when one can make it up one’s self. However, that is a poor way of looking at it,” said Cicely, giving a little toss to her head, as if to throw off such unelevated thoughts. “There are a great many more important things to think of. How will he ever manage to bring up the two boys?”
Mab made a pause of reflection. “To be sure Aunt Jane is not their relation,” she said, “and boys are more troublesome than girls. They want to have tutors and things, and to go to the university; and then what is the good of it all if they are not clever? Certainly boys are far more troublesome than girls.”
“And then, if you consider papa,” said Cicely, “that he is not very strong, and that he is old. One does not like to say anything disagreeable about one’s papa, but what did he want with those children? Surely we were quite enough when he is so poor.”
“There is always one thing he can do,” said Mab. “Everybody says he is a very good scholar. He will have to teach them himself.”
“We shall have to teach them,” said Cicely with energy; “I know so well that this is what it will come to. I don’t mean to teach them ourselves, for it is not much Latin I know, and you none, and I have not a word of Greek—but they will come upon us, I am quite sure.”
“You forget Mrs. St. John,” said Mab.
Cicely gave a slight shrug of her shoulders, but beyond that she did not pursue the subject. Mrs. St. John’s name stopped everything; they could not discuss her, nor express their disapprobation, and therefore they forbore religiously, though it was sometimes hard work.
“Blandina will think we are late,” at last she said, turning round. This was their name for their former instructress, their present employer. Mab turned dutifully, obeying her sister’s touch, but with a faint sigh.
“I hope they will be quiet at the Robinsons as we are passing,” the girl said. “What if they are in full swing, with the ‘Blue Danube’ perhaps! I hate to go in from a sweet night like this with noisy fiddles echoing through my head.”
Cicely gave a slight squeeze of sympathy to her sister’s arm. Do not you understand the girls, young reader? It was not the “Blue Danube” that was being played, but the old Lancers, the which to hear is enough to make wooden legs dance. Cicely and Mab pressed each other’s arms, and glanced up at the window, where dancing shadows and figures were visible. They sighed, and they went into their garret, avoiding the tacit disapproval of Miss Blandy’s good-night. She did not approve of twilight walks. Why should they want to go out just then like the tradespeople, a thing which ladies never did? But if Miss Blandy had known that the girls were quite saddened by the sound of the music from the Robinsons’, and yet could not sleep for listening to it, I fear she would have thought them very improper young persons indeed. She had forgotten how it felt to be eighteen—it was so long ago.