"What a goose you are, Dorothy!" but the elder sister laughed.
"Dorothea! Dorothea! remember now it's to be Dorothea, and you must write Dorothea on the envelopes of your letters to me," was the swift protest.
Three days after this conversation, Dolly, or Dorothea Dering, sat waiting with her mother in a handsome but rather old-fashioned-looking parlor in a rather old-fashioned house in New York, for the appearance of its hostess, Miss Marr. Dolly had been fidgeting about, examining the ornaments on the tables and the pictures on the walls, with a mingled expression of curiosity and irritability on her face, when she caught the sound of a firm even footfall on the polished oak floor of the hall. The girl made a little face at this firm, even sound, and said to herself, "It's just like her,—old Madam Prim!"
In another moment the footsteps came to the threshold of the parlor, and Dolly looked across the room to see—Why, there was some mistake! This was one of the pupils, and no Madam Prim; and what a stylish girl, what a stunning plain gown! thought Dolly. The minute after, "the stylish girl in the stunning plain gown" was saying, "How do you do, Mrs. Dering?" and Mrs. Dering was saying, "How do you do, Miss Marr?"
Dolly almost gasped with astonishment. "This, Miss Marr! Why, she didn't look any older than Mary."
The fact was, that Miss Marr was seven years older than Mary Dering, who was only twenty-three; but Angelique Marr was one of those persons who never look their age. Though not childish or immature, she had a fresh girl's aspect. In looking at her, Dolly forgot all her little plans for saying or doing this or that. Miss Marr looking at her said to herself: "Poor child! how shy and awkward and overgrown she is!" and forthwith concluded that it would be better not to notice her much for a time, and therefore gave all her attention to the mother, bestowing a swift fleeting smile now and then upon the girl,—a young smile, like that of a comrade in passing. Dolly was out of all her reckoning; her program of word and action which she had so carefully arranged being completely destroyed by this surprise of personality,—this substitution of the "stylish girl in a stunning plain gown" for an old Madam Prim. So absorbed was she in these thoughts, she heard but vaguely what her mother was saying, and was quite startled when the moment of parting from her came, forgetting all the fine little airs and good-bye messages she had arranged. She was so dazed, indeed, that she seemed stupid, and impressed Miss Marr more than ever as shy and awkward and overgrown; and it was out of pity for this shyness that Angelique Marr, as the door closed upon Mrs. Dering, turned to Mrs. Dering's daughter with her sweetest and friendliest of young smiles, and said to her,—
"Would you like to come up to my little parlor and have a cup of chocolate with me before I show you your room?"
As Dolly accepted the invitation, she had an odd subdued sort of feeling, as if she had been invited to lunch with one of Mary's fine young lady friends; and this feeling, instead of wearing off, increased, as she found herself in the little parlor drinking the most delicious foamy chocolate from a delicate Sèvres cup, while her entertainer helped her to biscuit or extra lumps of sugar, telling, as she did so, a droll little story about her first lesson in chocolate brewing from an old French soldier,—a friend of her father.
Dolly listened and laughed, and felt more and more that she was being treated in a very grown-up way by a very grown-up young lady, and that she must be equal to the occasion; so she sat up in her chair with a great deal of dignity, and endeavored to say the proper things in the proper places, with a delightful sense that she was doing the thing as well as Mary. It was at this moment that some one knocked at the door; and at Miss Marr's "Come in," there appeared a tall youth, who cried out as he entered,—
"Well, Aunt Angel!"