"Do you know her?" asked both the Miss Evelyns again.
"I can hardly say that," he replied. "I had such a pleasure formerly. Do I understand that she is the person to fill Mr. Rossitur's place when he is away?"
"So she says."
"And so she acts," said Constance. "I wish you had heard her yesterday. It was beyond everything. We were conversing very amicably, regarding each other through a friendly vista formed by the sugar-bowl and tea-pot, when a horrid man, that looked as if he had slept all his life in a hay-cock and only waked up to turn it over, stuck his head in and immediately introduced a clover-field; and Fleda and he went to tumbling about the cocks till I do assure you I was deluded into a momentary belief that hay-making was the principal end of human nature, and looked upon myself as a burden to society; and after I had recovered my locality and ventured upon a sentence of gentle commiseration for her sufferings, Fleda went off into a eulogium upon the intelligence of hay-makers in general and the strength of mind barbarians are universally known to possess."
The manner still more than the matter of this speech was beyond the withstanding of any good-natured muscles, though the gentleman's smile was a grave one and quickly lost in gravity. Mrs. Evelyn laughed and reproved in a breath; but the laugh was admiring and the reproof was stimulative. The bright eye of Constance danced in return with the mischievous delight of a horse that has slipped his bridle and knows you can't catch him.
"And this has been her life ever since Mr. Rossitur lost his property?"
"Entirely,--sacrificed!--" said Mrs. Evelyn, with a compassionately resigned air;--"education, advantages and everything given up; and set down here where she has seen nobody from year's end to year's end but the country people about--very good people--but not the kind of people she ought to have been brought up among."
"Oh mamma!" said the eldest Miss Evelyn in a deprecatory tone,--"you shouldn't talk so--it isn't right--I am sure she is very nice--nicer now than anybody else I know; and clever too."
"Nice!" said Edith. "I wish I had such a sister!"
"She is a good girl--a very good girl," said Mrs. Evelyn, in a tone which would have deterred any one from wishing to make her acquaintance.