"It may be disagreeable," continued Mrs. Mervale, "but I don't see the improbability of the thing, Angila, nor, indeed, the disagreeability even. The Constants are young people with a small family, and I think a woman is quite sufficient for them. Their house is small, I suppose."
"Oh, yes, a little bit of a place."
"Large enough for them," replied Mrs. Mervale, whose ideas were not as enlarged as her daughter's.
"Perhaps so," said Angila, "but I do hate low ceilings so. I don't care about a large house, but I do like large rooms."
"You can hardly have large rooms in a small house," remarked Mrs. Mervale, smiling.
"Why, Mrs. Astley's is only a two-story house, mamma, and her rooms are larger than these."
"Yes, my dear, Mrs. Astley's is an expensive house; the lot must be thirty feet by—"
But Angila had no time to go into the dimensions of people's "lots." She and Augusta were back to the party again; and they discussed dresses, and looks, and manners, with great goût.
Their criticisms were, like most young people's, always in extremes. The girls had either looked "lovely" or "frightful," and the young men were either "charming" or "odious;" and they themselves, from their own account, had been in a constant state of either delight or terror.
"I was so afraid Robert Hazlewood was going to ask me to waltz," said Angila; "and he waltzes so abominably that I did not know what I should do. But, to my delight, he asked me only for a cotillion, and I fortunately was engaged. I was so glad it was so."