"You know how I was dressed, aunt Serena; and you know how the other girls in school dress."
"I know a great many of them have foolish mothers, who make themselves ridiculous by the way they let their children appear. It is a training of vanity. I should not have thought Mrs. Mowbray would lend herself to such nonsense."
"But you do not think Antoinette has a foolish mother?" Rotha could not help saying. Mrs. Busby's daughter was quite as much dressed as the other girls. That she ought not to have made that speech, Rotha knew; but she made it. So much satisfaction she must have. It remained however completely ignored.
"Who made your dress?" Mrs. Busby went on.
"A dress-maker. One of the ladies went with me to have it cut."
"What did you do Christmas?" Antoinette inquired. In reply to which,
Rotha gave an account of her visit to the Old Coloured Home.
"Just like Mrs. Mowbray!" was Mrs. Busby's comment. "She has no discretion."
"Why do you say that, aunt Serena?"
"Such an expenditure of money for nothing. What good would a little tea and a little tobacco do those people? It would not last more than a week or two; and then they are just where they were before."
"But it did not cost so very much," objected Rotha.