"Do you mean the gineral and Matildy Stanley? Well now, 'pears to me, they're about the likeliest couple on the floor. If they're old it's their own business, their bones will ache the worse and the sooner; but as far as looks go, I will say there ain't man or boy of them all looks as spry as the gineral. And, as for Matildy, she looks well. I always liked Matildy, and I admire her."
"Oh, certainly, my dear, I quite agree with you. I am fond of Matilda--good simple soul--I cannot think how she missed getting married. So many worse, have established themselves well, since she was young. But really you know it is just a little ridiculous, at her time of life, to see her disporting herself. Why, there are her niece and your own boy in the same set!"
"So are Mr. Jordan and Mrs. Martindale."
"Oh, yes, but that is nothing. Jordan must make himself useful in his own house; and every one knows Louisa is a fool, who would like to be thought gay, giddy, and dangerous. I would bet a box of gloves, now, she thinks she is breaking my heart with jealousy. Just look how she wriggles about, and how the chandelier so nearly over her head brings out the crowsfeet and wrinkles round her eyes. I would not, for fifty dollars, walk down the centre of the room when that thing is lighted, if anybody were looking.
"You don't see no crowsfeet around Matildy's eyes, I guess. She's a fine woman, is Matildy Stanley. I wonder where the man's eyes have been that she should have stayed Matildy Stanley so long. See how she walks! As upright as a broomstick, and as springy as a cane."
"Men like other things along with looks," said Amelia bridling. "Though really Matilda looks quite nice--considering. One can scarcely claim to be in one's first youth now-a-days, and we all came out the same year, so our ages cannot be very far apart, Louisa Martindale, Matilda, and I; and Louisa and I have grown up children."
"You don't say that Mrs. Martindale is one age with Matildy? She looks nigh on twenty years older. You're different," she added quickly, as the gathering of a look on her friend's face, which did not betoken satisfaction, became apparent.
"Perhaps Louisa does wear a little badly," she answered, in returning good humour. "That light betrays everything. Louisa has so much vivacity, and perhaps she is just the least bit in the world affected, I believe it must be that has made her go off so. So much simpering and smiling, when one doesn't feel so very pleased, and makes believe a good deal, must naturally wear creases in the face. Do you not think so? Matilda, on the other hand, as you know, is so calm and tranquil; her face has not half the tear and wear of Louisa's, and therefore it lasts ever so much better. But, somehow, Louisa, I should say, has got more good out of her life. She has got more bad, too, I grant, for she has been in the thick of everything; but I think I prefer that. Matilda seemed never just to hit it off with the men. I do not recollect her ever receiving any marked attentions, and she did not betray any strong preferences to her. There are no little vignettes, that I ever heard of, to illustrate her biography. You know what I mean. Passages, people call them, which most of us like to bring out of our memories and look at, when we feel low and a little sentimental; just as we open the old box where our bridal wreath is laid away, and wonder as we wrap the thing up again in its tissue papers, if the gingerbread has really been worth all the gilding we overlaid it with."
Martha sniffed. It did not become an honest married woman to talk that way, she thought; but she said nothing, and the sniff proved enough to modulate Amelia's tone down to the narrational key again.
"When the officers were quartered here, of course it made society lively; and they paid a great deal of attention to us all,"--with just a suspicion of bridling, as she said it, as though she had "vignettes" of her own to remember, if it were worth while to count the scalps won in such old-world encounters. "Matilda was in the thick of it all, and got plenty of attention, but it never came to anything; and I am bound to say she betrayed no anxiety that it should. Her father was an Englishman, you see, and she has travelled; and she has money, and a sister; so I suppose it comes natural to them to take things easily and be comfortable in their own cool-blooded and retired sort of way. Very nice women, I must admit, and always the same wherever you meet them; but one cannot make free with them as we do amongst ourselves. Really it is quite like long ago, to see Matilda dancing out there with Considine. She is little changed. Fuller in the figure, perhaps, but that is becoming as one gets up in life. Her hair is in the same old way she always wore it--in streaming side curls. 'Books of Beauty,' when I was a little girl, displayed ladies with hair-dressing like that; but, except Matilda, I never saw a living woman wear it. Though it becomes her."