Emily bowed her head in assenting abstraction.
“I’m going to see if he has in his library a book I want,” continued Muriel. “Then, perhaps, I’ll go to the Athenæum, and refresh my art-sense—no I won’t either, for I remember Fernando said he would be there, and I can’t enjoy pictures with his everlasting cavilling in my ears.”
“Fernando has exquisite tastes,” said Emily, musingly.
“Fernando has exquisite distastes,” returned Muriel, piquantly. “Which I shall not enjoy this morning. So instead of the Athenæum, I’ll go to the Anti-Slavery Convention at the Melodeon. Uncle Lemuel was here last evening, you know, talking up Union-saving and the Fugitive Slave Law, and Mr. Webster, and all that sort of thing, and I shan’t feel right again till I hear the voices of the Good Old Cause from the platform of the Garrisonians.”
“Well, Muriel, you are the most astonishing Bostonienne I know,” said Emily, laughing. “I should just like to analyze your mélange. Let’s see now. In the first place, you defy fashion, and insist on wearing dresses that show your shape, when all the rest of us are swaddled in half a dozen starched petticoats, and are pining in secret for the hoops of our grandmothers to come into vogue again. You”—
“How many have you on, honey-bird? Come, ‘’fess,’ as Topsy says,” demanded Muriel, mischievously.
“I? Oh, I’m moderate,” returned Emily. “I only wear six.”
Muriel put up her hands, orbed her mouth, and opened her large eyes in mock horror.
“Goodness me!” said Emily, laughing and smoothing her bounteous skirts, “Six is nothing. Why everybody wears seven. Eight and nine are not uncommon. And there’s Bertha Appleby wears twelve.”
Muriel burst into low, silver laughter, in which she was joined by her friend.