“Oh, I shall tell you nothing about her looks; you must wait and judge for yourselves. There’s one thing I will say, however. I suppose you can’t alter your looks, girls; but, as far as manners are concerned, I wish very much that I could place my two eldest daughters under Miss Elwyn’s tuition.”
“Perhaps she will condescend to take a class, twice or three times a week, in ‘manners for six-pence,’” said the sprightly Miss Evelina. “I should like to see Calista and myself curtseying, and walking, and leaving and entering a room, as we used to be obliged to do for old Miss Pratt. Wouldn’t you, Calista?”
“Let’s see,” said Mr. Fairland, whose reminiscences were not always of the most agreeable nature to the young ladies—“let’s see. How long is it since you and C’listy were under the care of Miss Pratt? I think it must be nigh twenty years.”
“Twenty years, papa!—absurd!” shrieked Miss Calista; “why, you must be losing your memory!”
Now, if Mr. Fairland’s daughters were touchy on the subject of their ages, their father was no less so on that of his memory, as Miss Calista well knew when she made the foregoing remark.
“Losing my memory indeed, Miss C’listy! My memory is as sound as ever; and, to prove it to you, I will inform you, that I shall be sixty-four years old this coming August; and by the same token, you are just exactly half my age; and if you don’t believe it, you may just take a look at the family record, in the big Bible.”
“C’listy’s scratched out her date,” said little Rosa, “and so has Evelina.”
“Hold your tongue, you impertinent little minx!” said Miss Calista; “I really hope the prinky old governess who is coming will be able to whip a little manners into you. I really wonder you can allow the children to be so pert, mamma!”
The lady addressed as “mamma” was the second wife of Mr. Fairland, a rather handsome, but very languid lady of forty, who was sleepily sipping her coffee during the foregoing conversation. Now, as Mrs. Fairland did not look much older (perhaps not at all older, at the breakfast table,) than the oldest of her step-daughters, the young ladies quite prided themselves on so youthful a “mamma;” and when in company, or at the various watering-places to which, in former tunes, they had succeeded in dragging their parents, they hung round her, and asked her permission to do this and that, with the most child-like confidence in her judgment.
This was by no means relished by the step-mother, who had no fancy for matronizing daughters so nearly her own age, and who wished no less fervently than the young ladies themselves, that something in the shape of a husband would appear to carry each of them off. She never failed after such a display of filial affection on their part to explain to those near her; that the young ladies were her step-daughters; and to mention how odd it sounded to her when she was first married, to hear those great girls as tall as herself, call her “mamma.”