"No. Antoinette tells me how she used to dance with the villagers when she was a little girl at Yport."
"That can be easily learned. Do you ride?"
At any other time Phillis would have replied in the affirmative. Now she only asserted a certain power of sticking on, acquired on pony-back and in a paddock. Mrs. Cassilis sighed.
"After all, a few lessons will give you a becoming seat. Nothing so useful as clever horsemanship. But how shall we disguise the fact that you cannot read or write?"
"I shall not try to disguise it," Phillis cried, jealous of Mr. Dyson's good name.
"Well, my dear, we come now to the most important question of all. Where do you get your dresses?"
"O Mrs. Cassilis! do not say that my dresses are calculated to repel!" cried poor Phillis, her spirit quite broken by this time. "Antoinette and I made this one between us. Sometimes I ordered them at Highgate, but I like my own best."
Mrs. Cassilis put up a pair of double eye-glasses, because they were now arrived at a really critical stage of the catechism. There was something in the simple dress which forced her admiration. It was quite plain, and, compared with her own, as a daisy is to a dahlia.
"It is a very nice dress," she said critically. "Whether it is your figure, or your own taste, or material, I do not know; but you are dressed perfectly, Miss Fleming. No young lady could dress better."
Women meet on the common ground of dress. Phillis blushed with pleasure. At all events, she and her critic had something on which they could agree.