“Now, go up-stairs, and take off your bonnet, there’s a good child; there’s a fire in your room to warm it for puss in velvet. Go, and come down smooth and nice as your godmamma loves to see you. Dinner will be ready presently, and you must be nice for dinner. There, there, don’t talk any more, Sara, go and smooth your hair.”
“Oh yes, certainly, and then you’ll see what’s happened!” cried Sara, and frisked off out of the room like a little puss as she was.
I dare say the dear child expected nothing less than a great curiosity on my part about what had happened. Poor dear little kitten! she forgot that these little secrets were not such great matters to me. When she was gone we did not say a syllable about Sara; but her good father began to pull about the things on one of the tables behind the screen, and made signs to me with his eyebrows to come and talk to him. When I passed over that way he said quite softly, “Anything more?”
“Not a word,” said I; for, to be sure, that about Sarah marrying if they would have let her was private, and even the family solicitor had nothing to do with it, though, I dare say if the truth were known, he knew all about it better than I did. “Not a word; only, I suppose, I should say he must be about her own age.”
Mr. Cresswell glanced up at me, gave a short little smile, a nod of his head, and a shrug of his shoulders, and understood all about it as if I had told him.
“Was in love with her once, of course—thought so!” he said in his undertone: “you ladies, for one good thing, do think on when we’ve made fools of ourselves about you. It’s always our compensation.”
“We think on after you’ve forgotten all about it—that’s what you mean,” said I.
Mr. Cresswell gave another little shrug with his shoulders, and glanced at the screen behind which Sarah was knitting. “How lovely she was once, to be sure!” he said with a little sigh, and then laughed out at himself, not without a little redness in his face. To speak of a blush in a man of his years would be simply absurd, you know. Such a piece of presumption! I do believe Bob Cresswell had taken it upon him to fall in love with Sarah too in his young days. I could have boxed his ears for him; and to think he should have the audacity to laugh at himself now!
Chapter VI.
THIS conversation of ours, if it could be called a conversation, was luckily interrupted by the entrance of little Sara, who came into the room, lightfooted and noiseless, as such creatures can when they are young. She had on a velvet jacket, over a thick-corded blue silk dress. She must have spent quite a fortune in dress, the little saucy puss. What startled me, however, was her hair. She had a beautiful head of hair, and wore it of course in the fashion, as all young girls ought. Some people were so misguided as to call Sara Cresswell dark-complexioned. They meant she had very dark hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes. As for her skin, it was as pure as Sarah’s, who had always been a blonde beauty. But with all the mass of hair she had, when she chose to spread it out and display it, and with her black eyes and small face, I don’t wonder people thought the little witch dark. However, all that was done away now. There she stood before me, laughing, and making her curtsey, with short little curls, like a child’s, scarcely long enough to reach to her collar—all her splendid hair gone—a regular crop! I screamed out, as may be supposed; I declare I could have whipped her with the very best will in the world. The provoking, wicked little creature! no wonder her poor father called her contrairy. Dear, dear, to think what odd arrangements there are in this world! I should have brought her under some sort of authority, I promise you; but really, not meaning to be profane, one was really tempted to say to one’s self, what could Providence be thinking of to give such a child to poor old Bob Cresswell, who knew no more how to manage her than I know how to steer a boat?