“And yet you received her as if she were the very person you were wishing for,” continued Alice.
“I am sure,” said Emma, laughing, “I repeated, verbatim, what we had been saying.”
“Yes—but with such a different inference,” said Alice.
“Oh, if I keep to facts,” said Emma, gayly, “I do not feel responsible for other people’s inferences.”
“And about your hat,” continued Alice, reproachfully, “why, Emma, should you not have told the truth?”
“Because,” replied Emma, indignantly, “she would just have sent for Henrietta, and had hats made for both her girls precisely after mine, which, by the way, she would probably have sent to borrow as a pattern, if I had let her know she made it in the house. Mrs. Gardiner has no conscience, no decency about those things. She don’t scruple imitating any thing you have, if she can.”
Alice could not but smile in her turn at Emma’s ideas of ‘conscience,’ and ‘scruples,’ but she said,
“Do you think she believed you, Emma?”
“I don’t know whether she did or not, and I don’t care. She did not find out the truth, and that’s all I care about,” replied Emma, still quite indignant with Mrs. Gardiner. “No, I don’t suppose she did,” she continued, carelessly. “Nobody who saw the hat, and has eyes in their head, can mistake a home-made hat for a French one. But she could not tell me so, you know; and I don’t care what she thinks. I could not help laughing, Alice,” continued Emma, more in her usual gay manner, “to see you look so confounded when Mrs. Gardiner came in. You certainly have the most tell-tale face in the world. But it wont do, Alice. Now, as you have been lecturing me, I am going to return the compliment. Something is due to the bienséances of society, and you, with your truth, are really sometimes downright rude. Now last night, after Fanny Elton sung, you never said a word to Mrs. Elton, who sat beside you. Your coldness cost me a double dose of civility. I had to say all I could to make up for you. Do, pray, Alice, do your own civilities in future, for I have quite enough fibbing to do on my own account, without undertaking yours.”
“What could I say?” said Alice. “You would ask the girl to sing, and you know she has no voice, and is so dreadfully false, too. I really felt pained for her mother.”