“Will you come and see me?” said Mrs. Mowbray. “I have taken a great fancy to this child, Mrs. Buchanan. She has such pretty brown eyes and rosy cheeks.”
“Will you come and see me, Elsie? I have got no pretty daughters. Oh! how I wish I had one to dress up and play with; Frank is all very well, he is a good boy—but a girl would make me quite happy.”
Elsie was much disgusted with this address: to be told to her face that she had pretty brown eyes and rosy cheeks was unpardonable! In the first place, it was not true, for Elsie was well aware she was freckled, and thought red cheeks very vulgar and common. In those days heroines were always of an interesting paleness, and had black or very dark hair, “raven tresses” in poetry. And alas, Elsie’s locks were more ruddy than raven. She was quite aware that she was not a pretty daughter, and it was intolerable that anyone should mock her, pretending to admire her to her face!
Mrs. Buchanan took it much more sweetly. She looked at Elsie with caressing eyes. “She is the only girlie at home now,” she said, with a little sigh, “and she will have to learn to be a woman. Marion was always the greatest help—my right hand—since she was little more than a baby. And now Elsie will have to learn to take her place.”
“I don’t care so much for them being useful when they are ornamental,” said Mrs. Mowbray, “for that is the woman’s part in the world is it not? The men may do all the hard work, but they can’t do the decoration, can they? We want the girls for that.”
“Dear me,” said Mrs. Buchanan, “I am not sure that I ever looked upon it in that light. There is a great deal to be done, when there is a family of laddies; you cannot expect them to do things for themselves, and when there is only one sister, it is hard work.”
“Oh, I do not hold with that,” said the other lady. “I turn all that over to my maid. I would not make the girls servants to their brothers: quite the contrary. It is the boys that should serve the girls, in my opinion. Frank would no more let a young lady do things for him!—I consider it quite wrong for my part.”
Mrs. Buchanan was a little abashed.
“When you have plenty of servants and a small family, it is of course quite different, but you know what the saying is, ‘a woman’s work is never done’——”
“My dear Mrs. Buchanan, you are simply antediluvian,” said her visitor.