Part 1, Chapter IV.Miss Grace Donnithorne.When father came in that evening I was quite lively, but he did not specially notice it. I hoped he would. I felt wonderfully excited about Miss Grace Donnithorne. The boys, of course, were also in the room, but they were generally in a subdued state and disinclined to make a noise when father was present.Hannah came up with the dinner. She dumped down the tray on the sideboard, and put the appetising rump-steak in front of father. It was rump-steak with onions, and there were fried potatoes, and there was a good deal of juice coming out of the steak, and oh, such a savoury smell! Alex began to sniff, and Charley looked with keen interest and watering eyes at the good food.“There,” said Hannah, placing a mutton bone in front of Alex; “you get on with that. There’s plenty of good meat if you turn it round and cut from the back part. It’s good and wholesome, and fit for young people. The steak is for the Professor. I’ve got some roast potatoes; thought you’d like them.”The roast potatoes were a sop in the pan; but oh, how we did long for a piece of the steak! That was the worst about father; he really was a most kindly man, but he was generally, when not absorbed in lecturing—on which occasions, I was told, he was most animated and lively and all there—in a sort of dream. He ate his steak now without in the least perceiving that his children were dining off cold mutton. Had he once noticed it, he would have taken the mutton bone for himself and given us the steak. I heard Alex mutter, “It’s rather too bad, and he certainly won’t finish it!”But I sat down close to Alex, and whispered, “Alex, for shame! You know how he wants it; he isn’t at all strong.”Then Alex’s grumbles subsided, and he ate his own dinner with boyish appetite.After the brief and very simple meal had come to an end the boys left the room, and the Professor, as we often called him, stood with his back to the fire. Now was my opportunity.“Father,” I said, “I had a visitor this afternoon.”“Eh? What’s that. Dumps?”“Father, I wish you wouldn’t call me Dumps.”“Don’t fret me, Rachel; what does it matter what I call you? The thing is that I address the person who is known to me as my daughter. What does it matter whether I speak of her as Dumps, or Stumps, or Rachel, or Annie, or any other title? What’s in a name?”“Oh father! I think there’s a good deal in a name. But never mind,” I continued, for I didn’t want him to go off into one of those long dissertations which he was so fond of, quite forgetting the person he was talking to. So I added hastily, “Miss Grace Donnithorne called. She said she was a friend of yours. Do you know her?”“Miss—Grace—Donnithorne?” said father, speaking very slowly and pausing between each word. “Miss—Grace—Donnithorne?”“Why, yes, father,” I said, and I went close to him now. “She was, oh, so funny—such a fat, jolly sort of person! Only she didn’t like this house one bit.”“Eh? Eh?” said my father.He sank into a chair near the fire.“That is the very chair she sat in.”My father looked round at it.“The shabbiest chair in the whole house,” he said.“But the most comfy, father.”“Well, all right; tell me about her.”“She sat here, and she made me have a good fire.”“Quite right. Why should you be cold, Dumps?”“But I thought, father, that you did not want us to be extravagant?”“It is far more extravagant, let me tell you, Dumps, to get a severe cold and to have doctors’ bills to pay.”I was startled by this sentiment of father’s, and treasured it up to retail to Hannah in the future.“But tell me more about her,” he said.Then I related exactly what had happened. He was much amused, and after a time he said, with a laugh, “And so you got tea for her?”“Yes; she insisted on it. She wouldn’t let me off getting that tea for all the world. I didn’t mind it, of course—indeed, I quite enjoyed it—but what I did find hard was bringing up the hod of coal from the coal-cellar.”“Good practice, Dumps. Arms are made to be useful.”“So they are,” I answered. “And feet are made to run with.”“Of course, father.”“And a girl’s little brain is meant to keep a house comfortable.”“But, father, I haven’t such a little brain; and I think I could do something else.”“Could what?” said father, opening his eyes with horror. “What in the world is more necessary for a girl who is one day to be a woman than to know how to keep a house comfortable?”“Yes, yes,” I said; “I suppose so.”I was very easily stopped when father spoke in that high key.“And you have complained to me that you find life dull. Did you find Miss Grace Donnithorne dull?”“Oh no; she is very lively, father.”Father slowly crossed one large white hand over the other; then he rose.“Good-night, Dumps,” he said.“Have you nothing more to say?” I asked.“Good gracious, child! this is my night for school. I have to give two lectures to the boys of the First Form. Good-night—good-night.”He did not kiss me—he very seldom did that—but his voice had a very affectionate tone.After he had gone I sat for a long time by the fire. The neglected dinner-things remained on the table; the room was as shabby and as empty as possible, but not quite as cold as usual. Presently Hannah came in. She began to clear away the dinner-things.“Hannah,” I said, “I told father about Miss Grace Donnithorne’s visit.”“And who in the name of wonder may she be?” asked Hannah.“Oh, a lady. I let her in myself this afternoon.”“What call have you to be opening the hall door?”“Didn’t you hear a very sharp ring at the hall door about three o’clock?” I said.Hannah stood stock-still.“I did, and I didn’t,” she replied.“What do you mean by you did and you didn’t?”“Well, you see, child, I wasn’t in the humour to mount them stairs, so I turned my deaf ear to the bell and shut up my hearing one with cotton-wool; after that the bell might ring itself to death.”“Then, of course, Hannah, I had to go to the door.”“Had to? Young ladies don’t open hall doors.”“Anyhow, I did go to the door, and I let the lady in, and she sat by the fire. She’s a very nice lady indeed; she’s about your age, but not scraggy.”“I’ll thank you, Miss Dumps, not to call me names.”“But you are scraggy, for that means thin.”“I may be thin and genteel, and not fat and vulgar, but I won’t have it said of me that I’m scraggy,” said Hannah; “and by you too, Miss Dumps, of all people!”“Very well, Hannah.Shewas fat and vulgar, if you like, andyouare thin and genteel. Anyhow, I liked her; she was very jolly. She was about your age.”“How d’you know what age I be?”“Didn’t I see father put it down at the time of the last census?”“My word! I never knew children were listening. I didn’t want my age known.”“Hannah, you are forty-five.”“And what if I be?”“That’s very old,” I said.“’Tain’t,” said Hannah.“It is,” I repeated. “I asked Alex one day, and he said it was the age when women began to drop off.”“Lawks! what does that mean?” said Hannah.“It’s the way he expressed it. I don’t want to frighten you, but he said lots of people died then.” Hannah now looked really scared.“And that’s why, Hannah,” I continued, “I don’t like to see you in your grandmother’s shawl, for I am so awfully afraid your bad cold will mean your dropping off.”“Master Alex talks nonsense,” said Hannah. “You give me a start for a minute with the sort of gibberish you talk. Forty-five, be I? Well, if I be, my grandmother lived to eighty, and my grandfather to ninety; and if I take after him—and they say I have a look of him—I have another good forty-five years to hang on, so there’s no fear of my dropping off for a bit longer.” As these remarks of Hannah’s were absolutely impossible for me to understand, I did not pursue the subject further, but I said, “Father made such a nice remark to-night!”“And whatever was that? The Professor is always chary of his talk.”“He said that it was very wrong to be cold, and that the fires ought to be large and good.”“He said that?”“Yes, he did. And then I said, ‘I thought you wanted us to be saving;’ and he said, ‘It’s not saving to catch cold and have doctors’ bills.’ So now, Hannah, you have your orders, and we must have a big, big fire in the parlour during the cold weather.”“Don’t bother me any longer,” said Hannah. “Your talk is beyond anything for childishness! What with trying to frighten a body in the prime of life about her deathbed, and then giving utterance to rubbish which you put into the lips of the Professor, it is beyond any sensible person to listen to. It’s cotton-wool I’ll put in my right ear the next time I come up to see you, Miss Dumps.”By this time Hannah had filled her tray. She raised it and walked towards the door. She then, with some skill and strength, placed the whole weight of the tray on her right arm, and with the left she opened the door. I have seen waiters in restaurants do that sort of trick, but I never could understand it. Even if Hannah was dropping off, she must have some strong muscles, was my reflection.The next day I went to school as usual. The fog had cleared and it was fairly bright—not very bright, for it never is in the city part of London in the winter months.At school I, as usual, took my place in the same form with Agnes and Rita Swan. I was glad to see that I got to the head of the form and they remained in a subordinate position that day. In consequence during play-hours they were rather less patronising and more affectionate to me than usual. But I held up my head high and would have little to do with them. I was much more inclined to be friends with Augusta Moore than with the Swans just then.Now, Augusta lived in a very small house a long way from the school. She was very poor, and lived alone with her mother, whose only child she was. Augusta was an uncommunicative sort of girl. She worked hard at her books, and was slow to respond to her schoolfellows’ advances of friendship; but when I said, “May I walk up and down in the playground with you, Augusta?” she on this occasion made no objection.She glanced round at me once or twice, and then said, “I don’t mind, of course, your walking with me, Rachel, but I have to read over my poetry once or twice in order to be sure of saying it correctly.”I asked her if she would like me to hear her, and she was much obliged when I made this offer; and after a few minutes’ pause she handed me the book, and repeated a very fine piece of poetry with considerable spirit. When she had come to the end she said, “How many mistakes did I make?”“I don’t know,” I answered.“You don’t know? But you said you would hear me.”“I didn’t look at the book,” I said; “I was so absorbed watching you.”“Oh! then you are no good at all,” said Augusta, and she looked really annoyed. “You must give me back the book and I must read it over slowly.”“But you know it perfectly—splendidly.”“That won’t do. I have to make all the proper pauses, you know, just as our recitation mistress required, and there mustn’t be a syllable too many or a syllable too few in any of the words, and there mustn’t be a single word transposed. That is the proper way to say poetry, and I know perfectly well that I cannot repeat Gray’sElegylike that.”I said I was sorry, and she took the book from my hands. Presently she went away to a distant part of the playground, and I saw her lips moving as she paced up and down. I walked quickly myself, for I wanted to keep warm, and just before I went into the house Rita Swan came up to me.“Well, Dumps,” she said, “I wonder how you’ll like it?”“Like what?” I asked.Rita began to laugh rather immoderately. She looked at Agnes, who also came up at that moment.“I don’t believe Dumps knows,” she said.“Know what?” I asked angrily.“Why, what is about to happen. Oh, what a joke!”“What is it?” I asked again. I was so curious that I didn’t mind even their rude remarks at that moment.“She doesn’t know—she doesn’t know!” laughed Rita, and she jumped softly up and down. “What fun! What fun! Just to think of a thing of that sort going to take place in her very own house—in her very own, own house—and she not even to have a suspicion of it!”“Oh, if it’s anything to do with home, I know everything about my home,” I said in a very haughty tone, “and I don’t want you to tell me.”I marched past the two girls and entered the schoolroom. But during the rest of the morning I am afraid I was not very attentive to my lessons. I could not help wondering what they meant, and what there was to know. But of course there was nothing. They were such silly girls, and I could not understand for one moment how I had ever come to be friends with them.At one o’clock I went home, and there, lying on the parlour table, was a letter addressed to me. Now it is true, although some girls may smile when they read these words, I had never before received a letter. I have never made violent friendships. I met my school friends, for what they were worth, every day; I had no near relations of any sort, and father was always at home except for the holidays, when he took us children to some very cheap and very dreary seaside place. There was really no one to write to me, and therefore no one ever did write. So a letter addressed to Miss Rachel Grant made my heart beat. I took it up and turned it round and round, and looked at it back and front, and did all those strange things that a person will do to whom a letter is a great rarity and something precious.I heard the boys tramping into the house at that moment, and I thrust the letter into my pocket. Presently father came in, and we sat down to our midday meal. Luckily for me, neither father nor the boys knew anything about the letter; but it was burning a hole in my pocket, and I was dying for the boys to return to school, and for father to go back to his classes, so that I might have an opportunity of opening the precious epistle.Just as father was leaving the room he turned back to me and said, “You may accept it if you like.”“What, father?” I said in some astonishment.“When it is offered to you, you may accept it.”He stooped and, to my great astonishment, kissed me on the forehead. Then he left the room, and a minute or two later left the house.What could he mean? Would the letter explain? Was there anything at all in the strange words of Agnes and Rita Swan?Of course, any ordinary girl would have relieved her curiosity by tearing open the letter; but I was somewhat slow and methodical in my movements, and wished to prolong my luxury as much as possible. I had the whole long afternoon in which to learn a few stupid lessons, and then to do nothing.Just then Hannah came up to remove the lunch-things. She seemed so sure that I would tackle her about her age that she had stuck cotton-wool into her right ear. I therefore did not speak at all; I was most anxious for her to depart. At last she did so, banging the door fiercely behind her. I heard her tramping off with her tray, and then I knew that my moment of bliss had arrived.I got a knife and very deliberately cut the flap of the envelope open at the top. I then slipped my hand into the precious enclosure and took out its contents. I opened the sheet of paper; I could read writing quite well, and this writing was plain and quite intelligible to any ordinary eyes.On the top of the sheet of paper were written the words, “Hedgerow House, near Chelmsford, Essex,” and the letter ran as follows:“My dear Rachel or Dumps,—I want to know if you will come on Saturday next to pay me a little visit until Tuesday evening. I have heard that it is half-term holiday at your school, and should like you to see my pretty house and this pretty place. I believe I can give you a good time, so trust you will come.—Yours sincerely, Grace Donnithorne.“P.S.—In case you say yes, I will expect you by the train which leaves Liverpool Street at ten o’clock in the morning. I shall be waiting with the pony and cart at Chelmsford at eleven o’clock, and will drive you straight to Hedgerow House.“P.S. 2.—I have a great many pets. I trust you will be nice about them. Don’t fear my little dog; his bark is worse than his bite.“P.S. 3.—Your clothes will do; don’t bother about getting a fresh wardrobe.”This extraordinary letter caused a perfect tumult in my heart. I had never gone on a visit in my life. I really was a very stranded sort of girl. Hitherto I had had no outlets of any sort; I was just Dumps, a squat, rather plain girl, who knew little or nothing of the world—a neglected sort of girl, I have no doubt; but then I had no mother.A warm glow came all over me as I read the letter. The half-term holiday had not been looked forward to with any feelings of rapture by me. I could well guess what, under ordinary circumstances, would happen. I should be indoors all the morning as well as all the afternoon, for the half-term holiday was so planned that it should not in any way clash with the boys’ half-term holiday. If Alex and Charley had had a holiday at the same time, I might have coaxed one of them at least to come for a walk with me in Regent’s Park, or to take me to the British Museum, or to the Zoo, or to some other sort of London treat; but I shouldn’t be allowed to go out alone, and at present I was not in the humour to ask either Agnes or Rita Swan to entertain me. Now I need ask nobody, for I was going away on a visit. Of course, I understood at last the meaning of father’s words, “You may accept it;” though it seemed strange at the time, now I knew all about it, and my excitement was so great that I could scarcely contain myself.The first business was to answer the precious letter. I sat down and replied that I should be delighted to come to Miss Grace Donnithorne on the following Saturday, that I would be sure to be at Liverpool Street in good time to catch the train, that I adored pets, and was not at all afraid even of barking dogs. I did not mind going in a shabby dress, and above all things I hoped she would call me Rachel, and not Dumps.Having written my letter, which took me a long time, for I was unaccustomed to writing of that sort, I got an envelope and addressed it to Miss Grace Donnithorne, Hedgerow House, near Chelmsford, Essex, and then went out and dropped it into the nearest pillar-box. When I returned the afternoon had fled and it was time for tea.Father came in to tea. This was unexpected; he had not often time to leave his classes and rush across to the house to have tea; but he came in on this occasion, and when he saw me in the parlour bending over the warm fire making toast, he said at once, “Have you accepted it?”“Then you know all about it, father?” I exclaimed. “Oh yes,” he said, with a grave and yet queer smile trembling for an instant on his lips and then vanishing.“I thought that must be what you meant, and I have accepted it,” I said. “I mean about going to Miss Grace Donnithorne’s.”“Yes, child; it is very kind of her to ask you.”“Yes, isn’t it, father? And she is so nice and considerate; she says I may go in my shabby clothes.”“Your shabby clothes, Rachel!” he replied, putting on his spectacles and looking at me all over. “Your shabby clothes! Why should they be shabby?”“Well, father,” I answered, “they are not very smart. You know you haven’t given me a new dress for over a year, and my best pale-blue, which I got the summer before last, is very short in the skirt, and also in the sleeves. But never mind,” I continued, as he looked quite troubled; “I’ll do; I know I’ll do.”He looked at his watch.“I declare,” he said, “this will never answer. I don’t wish my daughter, Professor Grant’s daughter, to go away on a visit, and of all people to Miss Grace Donnithorne, shabby. Look here, Dumps, can these things be bought to hand?”“What do you mean, father?”He took up a portion of my skirt.“Things of that sort—can they be bought ready to put on?”“Oh, I expect so, father.”“They’re to be found in the big shops, aren’t they?”“Yes, yes,” I said warmly, for it seemed to me that a new vista of wonderful bliss was opening out before me. “Of course they are. We could go to—to Wallis’s shop at Holborn Viaduct. I have been there sometimes with the boys, and I’ve seen all sorts of things in the windows.”“Then go upstairs, put on your hat and jacket immediately, and I’ll take you there. You shall not go shabby to Miss Grace Donnithorne’s.”Wonder of wonders! I rushed up to my room; I put on my short, very much worn little jacket, and slipped my hat on my head, thrust my hands into my woollen gloves, and, lo! I was ready. I flew down again to father. He looked hard at me.“But, after all, youarequite well covered,” he said. It had certainly never before dawned upon his mind that a woman wanted to be more than, as he expressed it, covered.“But, father,” I said, “you can be shabbily covered and prettily covered. That makes all the difference; doesn’t it, father?”“I don’t know, child; I don’t know. When I read in the great works of Sophocles—”He wandered off into a learned dissertation. I was accustomed to these wanderings of his, and often had to pull him back.“I’m ready,” I said, “if you are.”“Then come along,” was his remark.When the Professor got out of doors he walked very fast indeed. He walked at such a fearful pace that I had nearly to run to keep up with him. But at last we found ourselves at Wallis’s. There my father became extremely masterful. He said to the shopman who came to meet him, “I want new garments for this young lady. Show me some, please—some that will fit—those that are ready-made.”We were taken into a special department where all sorts of dresses were to be found. Now, I had my own ideas about clothes, which by-and-by would turn out quite right and satisfactory; but father’s ideas were too primitive for anything. He disliked my interfering; he would not consult me. In the end I was furbished up with a long brown skirt which reached to my feet, and a dark-red blouse. My father bought these garments because he said they felt weighty and would keep out the cold. He desired them to be packed in brown-paper, paid for them, and gave me the parcel to carry.I felt a sense of absolute misery as I walked home with my hideous brown skirt and that dreadful red blouse. It was of a dark brick-red colour, and would not suit me; I knew that quite well. Still, father was highly pleased.“There, now,” he said, “you won’t go to Miss Grace Donnithorne’s looking shabby. But, good gracious me! I’m five minutes late for class. Good-night, Dumps.”“Won’t you be in to dinner, father?” I asked.“I don’t know—don’t expect to. Now, not another word, or I shall have one of my furious headaches. Good-night, my dear.”He banged the hall door, and I sat down with the brown-paper parcel in front of me.
When father came in that evening I was quite lively, but he did not specially notice it. I hoped he would. I felt wonderfully excited about Miss Grace Donnithorne. The boys, of course, were also in the room, but they were generally in a subdued state and disinclined to make a noise when father was present.
Hannah came up with the dinner. She dumped down the tray on the sideboard, and put the appetising rump-steak in front of father. It was rump-steak with onions, and there were fried potatoes, and there was a good deal of juice coming out of the steak, and oh, such a savoury smell! Alex began to sniff, and Charley looked with keen interest and watering eyes at the good food.
“There,” said Hannah, placing a mutton bone in front of Alex; “you get on with that. There’s plenty of good meat if you turn it round and cut from the back part. It’s good and wholesome, and fit for young people. The steak is for the Professor. I’ve got some roast potatoes; thought you’d like them.”
The roast potatoes were a sop in the pan; but oh, how we did long for a piece of the steak! That was the worst about father; he really was a most kindly man, but he was generally, when not absorbed in lecturing—on which occasions, I was told, he was most animated and lively and all there—in a sort of dream. He ate his steak now without in the least perceiving that his children were dining off cold mutton. Had he once noticed it, he would have taken the mutton bone for himself and given us the steak. I heard Alex mutter, “It’s rather too bad, and he certainly won’t finish it!”
But I sat down close to Alex, and whispered, “Alex, for shame! You know how he wants it; he isn’t at all strong.”
Then Alex’s grumbles subsided, and he ate his own dinner with boyish appetite.
After the brief and very simple meal had come to an end the boys left the room, and the Professor, as we often called him, stood with his back to the fire. Now was my opportunity.
“Father,” I said, “I had a visitor this afternoon.”
“Eh? What’s that. Dumps?”
“Father, I wish you wouldn’t call me Dumps.”
“Don’t fret me, Rachel; what does it matter what I call you? The thing is that I address the person who is known to me as my daughter. What does it matter whether I speak of her as Dumps, or Stumps, or Rachel, or Annie, or any other title? What’s in a name?”
“Oh father! I think there’s a good deal in a name. But never mind,” I continued, for I didn’t want him to go off into one of those long dissertations which he was so fond of, quite forgetting the person he was talking to. So I added hastily, “Miss Grace Donnithorne called. She said she was a friend of yours. Do you know her?”
“Miss—Grace—Donnithorne?” said father, speaking very slowly and pausing between each word. “Miss—Grace—Donnithorne?”
“Why, yes, father,” I said, and I went close to him now. “She was, oh, so funny—such a fat, jolly sort of person! Only she didn’t like this house one bit.”
“Eh? Eh?” said my father.
He sank into a chair near the fire.
“That is the very chair she sat in.”
My father looked round at it.
“The shabbiest chair in the whole house,” he said.
“But the most comfy, father.”
“Well, all right; tell me about her.”
“She sat here, and she made me have a good fire.”
“Quite right. Why should you be cold, Dumps?”
“But I thought, father, that you did not want us to be extravagant?”
“It is far more extravagant, let me tell you, Dumps, to get a severe cold and to have doctors’ bills to pay.”
I was startled by this sentiment of father’s, and treasured it up to retail to Hannah in the future.
“But tell me more about her,” he said.
Then I related exactly what had happened. He was much amused, and after a time he said, with a laugh, “And so you got tea for her?”
“Yes; she insisted on it. She wouldn’t let me off getting that tea for all the world. I didn’t mind it, of course—indeed, I quite enjoyed it—but what I did find hard was bringing up the hod of coal from the coal-cellar.”
“Good practice, Dumps. Arms are made to be useful.”
“So they are,” I answered. “And feet are made to run with.”
“Of course, father.”
“And a girl’s little brain is meant to keep a house comfortable.”
“But, father, I haven’t such a little brain; and I think I could do something else.”
“Could what?” said father, opening his eyes with horror. “What in the world is more necessary for a girl who is one day to be a woman than to know how to keep a house comfortable?”
“Yes, yes,” I said; “I suppose so.”
I was very easily stopped when father spoke in that high key.
“And you have complained to me that you find life dull. Did you find Miss Grace Donnithorne dull?”
“Oh no; she is very lively, father.”
Father slowly crossed one large white hand over the other; then he rose.
“Good-night, Dumps,” he said.
“Have you nothing more to say?” I asked.
“Good gracious, child! this is my night for school. I have to give two lectures to the boys of the First Form. Good-night—good-night.”
He did not kiss me—he very seldom did that—but his voice had a very affectionate tone.
After he had gone I sat for a long time by the fire. The neglected dinner-things remained on the table; the room was as shabby and as empty as possible, but not quite as cold as usual. Presently Hannah came in. She began to clear away the dinner-things.
“Hannah,” I said, “I told father about Miss Grace Donnithorne’s visit.”
“And who in the name of wonder may she be?” asked Hannah.
“Oh, a lady. I let her in myself this afternoon.”
“What call have you to be opening the hall door?”
“Didn’t you hear a very sharp ring at the hall door about three o’clock?” I said.
Hannah stood stock-still.
“I did, and I didn’t,” she replied.
“What do you mean by you did and you didn’t?”
“Well, you see, child, I wasn’t in the humour to mount them stairs, so I turned my deaf ear to the bell and shut up my hearing one with cotton-wool; after that the bell might ring itself to death.”
“Then, of course, Hannah, I had to go to the door.”
“Had to? Young ladies don’t open hall doors.”
“Anyhow, I did go to the door, and I let the lady in, and she sat by the fire. She’s a very nice lady indeed; she’s about your age, but not scraggy.”
“I’ll thank you, Miss Dumps, not to call me names.”
“But you are scraggy, for that means thin.”
“I may be thin and genteel, and not fat and vulgar, but I won’t have it said of me that I’m scraggy,” said Hannah; “and by you too, Miss Dumps, of all people!”
“Very well, Hannah.Shewas fat and vulgar, if you like, andyouare thin and genteel. Anyhow, I liked her; she was very jolly. She was about your age.”
“How d’you know what age I be?”
“Didn’t I see father put it down at the time of the last census?”
“My word! I never knew children were listening. I didn’t want my age known.”
“Hannah, you are forty-five.”
“And what if I be?”
“That’s very old,” I said.
“’Tain’t,” said Hannah.
“It is,” I repeated. “I asked Alex one day, and he said it was the age when women began to drop off.”
“Lawks! what does that mean?” said Hannah.
“It’s the way he expressed it. I don’t want to frighten you, but he said lots of people died then.” Hannah now looked really scared.
“And that’s why, Hannah,” I continued, “I don’t like to see you in your grandmother’s shawl, for I am so awfully afraid your bad cold will mean your dropping off.”
“Master Alex talks nonsense,” said Hannah. “You give me a start for a minute with the sort of gibberish you talk. Forty-five, be I? Well, if I be, my grandmother lived to eighty, and my grandfather to ninety; and if I take after him—and they say I have a look of him—I have another good forty-five years to hang on, so there’s no fear of my dropping off for a bit longer.” As these remarks of Hannah’s were absolutely impossible for me to understand, I did not pursue the subject further, but I said, “Father made such a nice remark to-night!”
“And whatever was that? The Professor is always chary of his talk.”
“He said that it was very wrong to be cold, and that the fires ought to be large and good.”
“He said that?”
“Yes, he did. And then I said, ‘I thought you wanted us to be saving;’ and he said, ‘It’s not saving to catch cold and have doctors’ bills.’ So now, Hannah, you have your orders, and we must have a big, big fire in the parlour during the cold weather.”
“Don’t bother me any longer,” said Hannah. “Your talk is beyond anything for childishness! What with trying to frighten a body in the prime of life about her deathbed, and then giving utterance to rubbish which you put into the lips of the Professor, it is beyond any sensible person to listen to. It’s cotton-wool I’ll put in my right ear the next time I come up to see you, Miss Dumps.”
By this time Hannah had filled her tray. She raised it and walked towards the door. She then, with some skill and strength, placed the whole weight of the tray on her right arm, and with the left she opened the door. I have seen waiters in restaurants do that sort of trick, but I never could understand it. Even if Hannah was dropping off, she must have some strong muscles, was my reflection.
The next day I went to school as usual. The fog had cleared and it was fairly bright—not very bright, for it never is in the city part of London in the winter months.
At school I, as usual, took my place in the same form with Agnes and Rita Swan. I was glad to see that I got to the head of the form and they remained in a subordinate position that day. In consequence during play-hours they were rather less patronising and more affectionate to me than usual. But I held up my head high and would have little to do with them. I was much more inclined to be friends with Augusta Moore than with the Swans just then.
Now, Augusta lived in a very small house a long way from the school. She was very poor, and lived alone with her mother, whose only child she was. Augusta was an uncommunicative sort of girl. She worked hard at her books, and was slow to respond to her schoolfellows’ advances of friendship; but when I said, “May I walk up and down in the playground with you, Augusta?” she on this occasion made no objection.
She glanced round at me once or twice, and then said, “I don’t mind, of course, your walking with me, Rachel, but I have to read over my poetry once or twice in order to be sure of saying it correctly.”
I asked her if she would like me to hear her, and she was much obliged when I made this offer; and after a few minutes’ pause she handed me the book, and repeated a very fine piece of poetry with considerable spirit. When she had come to the end she said, “How many mistakes did I make?”
“I don’t know,” I answered.
“You don’t know? But you said you would hear me.”
“I didn’t look at the book,” I said; “I was so absorbed watching you.”
“Oh! then you are no good at all,” said Augusta, and she looked really annoyed. “You must give me back the book and I must read it over slowly.”
“But you know it perfectly—splendidly.”
“That won’t do. I have to make all the proper pauses, you know, just as our recitation mistress required, and there mustn’t be a syllable too many or a syllable too few in any of the words, and there mustn’t be a single word transposed. That is the proper way to say poetry, and I know perfectly well that I cannot repeat Gray’sElegylike that.”
I said I was sorry, and she took the book from my hands. Presently she went away to a distant part of the playground, and I saw her lips moving as she paced up and down. I walked quickly myself, for I wanted to keep warm, and just before I went into the house Rita Swan came up to me.
“Well, Dumps,” she said, “I wonder how you’ll like it?”
“Like what?” I asked.
Rita began to laugh rather immoderately. She looked at Agnes, who also came up at that moment.
“I don’t believe Dumps knows,” she said.
“Know what?” I asked angrily.
“Why, what is about to happen. Oh, what a joke!”
“What is it?” I asked again. I was so curious that I didn’t mind even their rude remarks at that moment.
“She doesn’t know—she doesn’t know!” laughed Rita, and she jumped softly up and down. “What fun! What fun! Just to think of a thing of that sort going to take place in her very own house—in her very own, own house—and she not even to have a suspicion of it!”
“Oh, if it’s anything to do with home, I know everything about my home,” I said in a very haughty tone, “and I don’t want you to tell me.”
I marched past the two girls and entered the schoolroom. But during the rest of the morning I am afraid I was not very attentive to my lessons. I could not help wondering what they meant, and what there was to know. But of course there was nothing. They were such silly girls, and I could not understand for one moment how I had ever come to be friends with them.
At one o’clock I went home, and there, lying on the parlour table, was a letter addressed to me. Now it is true, although some girls may smile when they read these words, I had never before received a letter. I have never made violent friendships. I met my school friends, for what they were worth, every day; I had no near relations of any sort, and father was always at home except for the holidays, when he took us children to some very cheap and very dreary seaside place. There was really no one to write to me, and therefore no one ever did write. So a letter addressed to Miss Rachel Grant made my heart beat. I took it up and turned it round and round, and looked at it back and front, and did all those strange things that a person will do to whom a letter is a great rarity and something precious.
I heard the boys tramping into the house at that moment, and I thrust the letter into my pocket. Presently father came in, and we sat down to our midday meal. Luckily for me, neither father nor the boys knew anything about the letter; but it was burning a hole in my pocket, and I was dying for the boys to return to school, and for father to go back to his classes, so that I might have an opportunity of opening the precious epistle.
Just as father was leaving the room he turned back to me and said, “You may accept it if you like.”
“What, father?” I said in some astonishment.
“When it is offered to you, you may accept it.”
He stooped and, to my great astonishment, kissed me on the forehead. Then he left the room, and a minute or two later left the house.
What could he mean? Would the letter explain? Was there anything at all in the strange words of Agnes and Rita Swan?
Of course, any ordinary girl would have relieved her curiosity by tearing open the letter; but I was somewhat slow and methodical in my movements, and wished to prolong my luxury as much as possible. I had the whole long afternoon in which to learn a few stupid lessons, and then to do nothing.
Just then Hannah came up to remove the lunch-things. She seemed so sure that I would tackle her about her age that she had stuck cotton-wool into her right ear. I therefore did not speak at all; I was most anxious for her to depart. At last she did so, banging the door fiercely behind her. I heard her tramping off with her tray, and then I knew that my moment of bliss had arrived.
I got a knife and very deliberately cut the flap of the envelope open at the top. I then slipped my hand into the precious enclosure and took out its contents. I opened the sheet of paper; I could read writing quite well, and this writing was plain and quite intelligible to any ordinary eyes.
On the top of the sheet of paper were written the words, “Hedgerow House, near Chelmsford, Essex,” and the letter ran as follows:
“My dear Rachel or Dumps,—I want to know if you will come on Saturday next to pay me a little visit until Tuesday evening. I have heard that it is half-term holiday at your school, and should like you to see my pretty house and this pretty place. I believe I can give you a good time, so trust you will come.—Yours sincerely, Grace Donnithorne.“P.S.—In case you say yes, I will expect you by the train which leaves Liverpool Street at ten o’clock in the morning. I shall be waiting with the pony and cart at Chelmsford at eleven o’clock, and will drive you straight to Hedgerow House.“P.S. 2.—I have a great many pets. I trust you will be nice about them. Don’t fear my little dog; his bark is worse than his bite.“P.S. 3.—Your clothes will do; don’t bother about getting a fresh wardrobe.”
“My dear Rachel or Dumps,—I want to know if you will come on Saturday next to pay me a little visit until Tuesday evening. I have heard that it is half-term holiday at your school, and should like you to see my pretty house and this pretty place. I believe I can give you a good time, so trust you will come.—Yours sincerely, Grace Donnithorne.“P.S.—In case you say yes, I will expect you by the train which leaves Liverpool Street at ten o’clock in the morning. I shall be waiting with the pony and cart at Chelmsford at eleven o’clock, and will drive you straight to Hedgerow House.“P.S. 2.—I have a great many pets. I trust you will be nice about them. Don’t fear my little dog; his bark is worse than his bite.“P.S. 3.—Your clothes will do; don’t bother about getting a fresh wardrobe.”
This extraordinary letter caused a perfect tumult in my heart. I had never gone on a visit in my life. I really was a very stranded sort of girl. Hitherto I had had no outlets of any sort; I was just Dumps, a squat, rather plain girl, who knew little or nothing of the world—a neglected sort of girl, I have no doubt; but then I had no mother.
A warm glow came all over me as I read the letter. The half-term holiday had not been looked forward to with any feelings of rapture by me. I could well guess what, under ordinary circumstances, would happen. I should be indoors all the morning as well as all the afternoon, for the half-term holiday was so planned that it should not in any way clash with the boys’ half-term holiday. If Alex and Charley had had a holiday at the same time, I might have coaxed one of them at least to come for a walk with me in Regent’s Park, or to take me to the British Museum, or to the Zoo, or to some other sort of London treat; but I shouldn’t be allowed to go out alone, and at present I was not in the humour to ask either Agnes or Rita Swan to entertain me. Now I need ask nobody, for I was going away on a visit. Of course, I understood at last the meaning of father’s words, “You may accept it;” though it seemed strange at the time, now I knew all about it, and my excitement was so great that I could scarcely contain myself.
The first business was to answer the precious letter. I sat down and replied that I should be delighted to come to Miss Grace Donnithorne on the following Saturday, that I would be sure to be at Liverpool Street in good time to catch the train, that I adored pets, and was not at all afraid even of barking dogs. I did not mind going in a shabby dress, and above all things I hoped she would call me Rachel, and not Dumps.
Having written my letter, which took me a long time, for I was unaccustomed to writing of that sort, I got an envelope and addressed it to Miss Grace Donnithorne, Hedgerow House, near Chelmsford, Essex, and then went out and dropped it into the nearest pillar-box. When I returned the afternoon had fled and it was time for tea.
Father came in to tea. This was unexpected; he had not often time to leave his classes and rush across to the house to have tea; but he came in on this occasion, and when he saw me in the parlour bending over the warm fire making toast, he said at once, “Have you accepted it?”
“Then you know all about it, father?” I exclaimed. “Oh yes,” he said, with a grave and yet queer smile trembling for an instant on his lips and then vanishing.
“I thought that must be what you meant, and I have accepted it,” I said. “I mean about going to Miss Grace Donnithorne’s.”
“Yes, child; it is very kind of her to ask you.”
“Yes, isn’t it, father? And she is so nice and considerate; she says I may go in my shabby clothes.”
“Your shabby clothes, Rachel!” he replied, putting on his spectacles and looking at me all over. “Your shabby clothes! Why should they be shabby?”
“Well, father,” I answered, “they are not very smart. You know you haven’t given me a new dress for over a year, and my best pale-blue, which I got the summer before last, is very short in the skirt, and also in the sleeves. But never mind,” I continued, as he looked quite troubled; “I’ll do; I know I’ll do.”
He looked at his watch.
“I declare,” he said, “this will never answer. I don’t wish my daughter, Professor Grant’s daughter, to go away on a visit, and of all people to Miss Grace Donnithorne, shabby. Look here, Dumps, can these things be bought to hand?”
“What do you mean, father?”
He took up a portion of my skirt.
“Things of that sort—can they be bought ready to put on?”
“Oh, I expect so, father.”
“They’re to be found in the big shops, aren’t they?”
“Yes, yes,” I said warmly, for it seemed to me that a new vista of wonderful bliss was opening out before me. “Of course they are. We could go to—to Wallis’s shop at Holborn Viaduct. I have been there sometimes with the boys, and I’ve seen all sorts of things in the windows.”
“Then go upstairs, put on your hat and jacket immediately, and I’ll take you there. You shall not go shabby to Miss Grace Donnithorne’s.”
Wonder of wonders! I rushed up to my room; I put on my short, very much worn little jacket, and slipped my hat on my head, thrust my hands into my woollen gloves, and, lo! I was ready. I flew down again to father. He looked hard at me.
“But, after all, youarequite well covered,” he said. It had certainly never before dawned upon his mind that a woman wanted to be more than, as he expressed it, covered.
“But, father,” I said, “you can be shabbily covered and prettily covered. That makes all the difference; doesn’t it, father?”
“I don’t know, child; I don’t know. When I read in the great works of Sophocles—”
He wandered off into a learned dissertation. I was accustomed to these wanderings of his, and often had to pull him back.
“I’m ready,” I said, “if you are.”
“Then come along,” was his remark.
When the Professor got out of doors he walked very fast indeed. He walked at such a fearful pace that I had nearly to run to keep up with him. But at last we found ourselves at Wallis’s. There my father became extremely masterful. He said to the shopman who came to meet him, “I want new garments for this young lady. Show me some, please—some that will fit—those that are ready-made.”
We were taken into a special department where all sorts of dresses were to be found. Now, I had my own ideas about clothes, which by-and-by would turn out quite right and satisfactory; but father’s ideas were too primitive for anything. He disliked my interfering; he would not consult me. In the end I was furbished up with a long brown skirt which reached to my feet, and a dark-red blouse. My father bought these garments because he said they felt weighty and would keep out the cold. He desired them to be packed in brown-paper, paid for them, and gave me the parcel to carry.
I felt a sense of absolute misery as I walked home with my hideous brown skirt and that dreadful red blouse. It was of a dark brick-red colour, and would not suit me; I knew that quite well. Still, father was highly pleased.
“There, now,” he said, “you won’t go to Miss Grace Donnithorne’s looking shabby. But, good gracious me! I’m five minutes late for class. Good-night, Dumps.”
“Won’t you be in to dinner, father?” I asked.
“I don’t know—don’t expect to. Now, not another word, or I shall have one of my furious headaches. Good-night, my dear.”
He banged the hall door, and I sat down with the brown-paper parcel in front of me.
Part 1, Chapter V.The Professor Chooses a Dress.Father was really quite interested about my wardrobe. He asked me two or three questions during the few days which ensued between Wednesday and Saturday, and in particular said what good weight the brown skirt was, and what an age it would last me.“But it’s just a wee bit too long for me,” I could not help remarking.He raised his brows very high when I said this, and pushed his glasses up on his forehead. Then he said after a pause, “There’s no pleasing some people. Didn’t you tell me that you had outgrown your clothes, and wasn’t I once and for all going to put a stop to that sort of thing? Do you suppose that a man who is saving his money to send his sons to Oxford or Cambridge can afford to buy dresses often? That skirt leaves room for growth, and as it thins off with age it will be less heavy. It’s exactly the sort you ought to have, Dumps, and I won’t hear a word against it.”“Of course not, father. It was very kind of you to buy it for me.”“Perhaps you’d best travel in it,” he said.But to this I objected, on the score that it might get injured in the train.“Very true,” he remarked. “But, all the same, I should like Miss Donnithorne to see you looking nice. Well, you can put it on when you get there. Be sure you do that. Go straight up to your room and put on your brown skirt and your red blouse, and go down to her looking as my daughter ought to look.”“Yes, father,” I said meekly.The joyful day arrived. Father could not take me to the station himself; but Hannah and I went there in a cab. Hannah was terribly cross. She said she knew I’d come home “that spoilt as would be past bearing.”“You’re going to that fat, vulgar body,” she said. “Oh, don’t you talk to me about it’s being genteel to put on flesh, for I know better. But, anyhow, you’ll be a good riddance while you are away, Dumps. I’ll have time to give the parlour a rare good turning out.”“Oh Hannah,” I said, nestling up a little closer to her in the cab, “aren’t you ever a little bit sorry that I’m going away?”“Well, to be sure, child,” she said, her eyes twinkling, “I’ve no fault to find with you. You can’t help your looks, and you can’t help your aggrawating manners, and you can’t help your perverse ways of going on. But there, there! you’re as you’re made, and I’ve no fault to find with you.”This was a great deal from Hannah, and I was obliged to be satisfied with it.“I don’t think I shall ever grow up vain,” I thought, “and I suppose I ought to be satisfied.”By-and-by I was cosily travelling first-class, for father was peremptory on this point, down to Chelmsford. I had left smoky London behind me, and was in the country. It was very cold in the country; snow was over everything, and the whole place looked so white and so sweet, and I just pined for a breath of the fresh country air. So I flung open the window of the carriage nearest to me and poked out my head.A poke of another sort was presently administered somewhere in my back, and turning, I saw a most irate old gentleman who had been sitting at the other end of the carriage.“I’ll thank you, young person,” he said, “to shut that window without a moment’s delay. You must be mad to put your head out like that in such bitter weather. I’m certain to be attacked by bronchitis with your wilful and violent way of letting such extreme cold into the carriage.”I shut the window in a great hurry and sat down, very red in the face. The old gentleman did not take any further notice of me; he buried himself behind his paper. After a minute or two I heard him sneeze, and when he sneezed he gave me a very angry glance. Then he coughed, and then he sneezed again; finally he buried himself once more in his paper.By-and-by we got to Chelmsford. It was nice to see Miss Grace Donnithorne standing on the platform. She was so round and so jolly and good-natured-looking, and her eyes, which were like little black beads in the middle of her face, quite shone with happiness.“There you are, you poor Dumps!” she said. “Hop out, dear—hop out.”I sprang from the carriage to the platform.“Where is your luggage, my dear?”“I have it,” I said; “it is in a brown-paper parcel on the luggage-rack.”I thought I heard Miss Donnithorne murmur some thing; but all she said was, “Give it to me, dear. Be quick, or the train will move on.”So I lugged it out as best I could, and there I stood in my shabby grey tweed dress, with my little worn-out jacket and my small hat, clutching at the brown-paper parcel. It was fairly heavy, for I had had to put other things into it besides the now dress and the new jacket; but it was tied very securely with cord, and addressed in my father’s handwriting with my name to the care of Miss Grace Donnithorne, Hedgerow House.“Now then, child,” said Miss Grace, “we’ll get into my pony-trap and drive home. Why, you poor thing, you’re as cold as charity; and no wonder—no wonder.”She insisted on carrying the brown-paper parcel herself. Waiting outside the station was a very neat little cart drawn by a shaggy pony. There was a boy standing by the pony’s head. He was dressed in quite a smart sort of dress, which I afterwards discovered was called livery. He sprang forward when he saw Miss Donnithorne and took the parcel, which she told him to put carefully in the back of the carriage, and on no account to trample on it with his feet.Then we both got in, and a great fur rug was wrapped round us, and a cloak of Miss Donnithorne’s fastened round my neck.“Now you can’t possibly catch cold,” she said.—“Jump up behind, Jim.”Jim obeyed. Miss Donnithorne took the reins, and off we flew.Oh, how wonderful, how delightful was the sensation!We got to the cottage in about a quarter of an hour. Miss Grace told me that although it was called Hedgerow House, it was really only a cottage; but I could not tell what the difference was. It was a long, low, rambling sort of house, all built in one floor. The walls were so completely covered with creepers that, even though it was winter, you could not see much of the original stone-work; and where there were no creepers in full leaf there was trellis-work, which was covered with the bare branches of what in summer, Miss Donnithorne told me, would be roses.“Do roses really grow like that?” I asked.“Oh yes,” she replied; “and jasmine and wistaria and clematis, and all sorts of other things.”The dog that Miss Donnithorne had warned me about came out to meet us. He was a fox-terrier, with a very sharp nose black as coal, and all the rest of his body was snow-white, except his sparkling, melting, wonderful brown eyes. I must say his eyes flashed very angrily when he first saw me, but Miss Donnithorne said, “Down, Snap—down!” and then she laid her hand on Snap’s collar and said, “You’re to be good to this young lady, Snap.”Snap, after glancing at me in a crooked sort of way, as though he were not at all sure that he would not prove the significance of his name, condescended to wag his tail very slightly.Miss Donnithorne took me into a very pretty little sitting-room at one side of the pretty little square hall. This room was filled with all sorts of unaccountable things. There were glass cases filled with stuffed birds of gay plumage. Miss Donnithorne glanced at them.“I’ll tell you their names presently,” she said. “My brother who died brought them to me from South America.”There were three of these cases. There were also stuffed animals, a hare, a fox, and a dog, perched above doors and at the top of the bookcase. Where there were not these cases of stuffed creatures there were books, so that you really could not see one scrap of the original paper of the room.“Is this the drawing-room?” I asked.“Oh, I don’t call it by that name,” said Miss Donnithorne. “I sit here because I have all my books and papers handy about the room. But come to the fire and warm yourself.”Certainly the fire in that dear little grate looked very different from the dismal fire which Miss Donnithorne had seen in our big, fog-begrimed parlour. I came close to it, and I even so far forgot proprieties as to drop on my knees and to hold out my hands to the blaze.“Chilblains, I declare!” said Miss Donnithorne, taking one of my hands between both her own. “The best cure for those is to bathe your hands once or twice a day in a very strong solution of salt and hot water. The water must be as hot as you can bear it. But the best cure of all is a good circulation.”“What’s that?” I asked.“Bless you, child! Don’t you know, and you go to school every day?”I stood up; my hands were warm, and my feet were tingling with renewed life. I had a curious sensation that my nose, which was by no means my best feature, was very red, for it certainly felt hot. I turned round and said, “I am quite warm now.”“Then you would like to go up to your room. Nancy will go with you. She’ll unpack your parcel for you.”“Oh no, thank you,” I replied. Then I added, “Is Nancy one of your servants?”“I have only one servant in this tiny house, my dear, and Nancy is the one. She is a very good-natured sort of girl, and quite pleased at the idea of your coming to stay with me. I treat her as a sort of friend, you see, as she and I are all alone in the house together.”I began to like Miss Donnithorne better and better each moment. She was so jolly. Whenever she spoke her eyes sparkled as though they were laughing, while the rest of her face was grave. All the same, I did not want Nancy, and I said so.“I can help myself,” I argued. “We have only got Hannah in our big house.”“Well, well, dear! if you can manage for yourself, I am the last one to wish you to do otherwise,” said Miss Donnithorne. “Here is your parcel; you can take it upstairs.”“But how am I to find my way to my room?”“You cannot lose it, my dear. Go up that little staircase, and when you reach the landing you will see an open door. Go through that doorway and you will be in your own bedroom. There’s no other bedroom on that landing, so you cannot miss it, can you?”“No,” I replied, laughing.I seized my brown-paper parcel and ran upstairs. It certainly was nice in the country, and how delicious a small house was! One could be warm in a small house; it was impossible to be warm in that great, rambling, old-fashioned house which belonged to the college and where father and the boys and I lived.I found my bedroom. Now, girls who are accustomed to nice bedrooms all their lives take, I suppose, no particular interest in another nice bedroom when they are suddenly introduced into it. But my room at home could never, under any pretext, be considered nice. For some extraordinary reason, big as the house was, I had always slept next to Hannah in one of the attics. There was no earthly reason for this, except perhaps that when I was a child I was nearer to Hannah in case I should turn ill. It had never occurred to me to change my room, and it had certainly never occurred to anybody else to make it comfortable. There was a bedstead and a bed of a sort, and there was a looking-glass, with a crack right down the middle, which stood on a little deal table. The deal table was, as a rule, covered with a cloth, which seldom looked white on account of the London fogs. There was a huge wooden press—it could certainly not be called by the modern name of wardrobe—in which I kept my clothes; and there was a wooden chair on which I placed my candle at night, and that was about all. One side of the room had a sloping roof, and the window was at the best of times of minute proportions. But the room itself had a vast amount of unoccupied space; it was a huge room, and terribly ugly.Never had I realised that fact until I went into the sweet little apartment which Miss Grace Donnithorne had ordered to be got ready for me. In the first place, its window looked out on a pure expanse of snow-covered country, and I jumped softly up and down as I gazed at that view, for the sun was shining on it, and the sky overhead was blue—blue as sapphires. Then in the grate there was a fire—a fire just as bright as the one in the little sitting-room with the stuffed birds downstairs; and all the hangings of the room were of white dimity, which had evidently been put up fresh from the wash. It was by no means a grand room; it was simple of the simple, but it did look sweet. There was a little nosegay of chrysanthemums on the dressing-table; there were dainty hangings round my snow-white couch; and on the floor was an old-fashioned carpet made of different shades of crimson, and very thick and soft it felt to the feet. The china in the room was very pretty, being white with scarlet berries on it; it all looked Christmasy and wintry and yet cheery, like the sort of Christmases one reads of in the fairy-tales of long ago.I unfastened my parcel. I had just taken my long brown skirt out of its wrappings, and was shaking it out preparatory to putting it on, when I heard Miss Grace say from the bottom of the stairs, “Dumps, how long will it be before you are downstairs? I am just having the cutlets dished up.”“Oh dear!” I said to myself.—“I’ll be down in a very few minutes,” I answered.Now, I had promised father that I would certainly go down in the brown skirt and red blouse, and I would not break that promise to him for the world; so I quickly divested myself of my shabby little travelling costume and got into the brown skirt. It was a little tight in the waist, for I must say mine was very broad, but in every other single particular it was too big for me; it was so long in front that I could scarcely walk without stumbling. Still, I had no doubt that I made a very imposing figure in it. It was thick, it felt warm, and I remembered my father’s remark that there would be room for growth, and that the thinning process would eventually make it not quite so heavy.But the brown skirt, although a partial success, was nothing at all to the red blouse. I have said that it was a brick-red, and it did not suit my face. It was of common material, made with thick folds, and the sleeves were much too long. I got into it somehow, and cast a glance at myself in the glass. How funny I looked!—my head not too tidy; my face flushed, in by no means a becoming way; with a brick-red blouse and a brown skirt. Nevertheless, I was dressed, and there was a sort of satisfaction in feeling grown-up just for once. I wished that I had had time to plait my hair and pin it round my head; then I might have impressed Miss Grace Donnithorne with the fact that not a child but a grown-up young lady had come to visit her. But as there was no time for that, and as there was a most appetising smell coming up the narrow stairs, I flew down just as I was, in my new costume. I very nearly stumbled as I ran downstairs, but I saved myself by picking up my skirt, and then I entered the little drawing-room.“Come, come, child!” said Miss Donnithorne. “Not that way; come into this room now.”I turned and crossed the little hall and entered the dining-room. The dining-room was twice the size of the little room where the stuffed birds dwelt. It was furnished in quite a modern fashion, and looked very nice indeed to me. The cloth on the table was so white that it did not even look dirty by contrast with the snow outside, and the silver shone—oh, like a number of looking-glasses; and the knives were so clean and new-looking.Miss Grace just opened her eyes for the tenth of a second when I entered the room, and I wondered what reflection passed through her mind, but she gave utterance to none. She invited me to seat myself, and I had the most delicious meal I had ever partaken of in the whole course of my life. Nancy flew in and out, serving us with more and more dainties: puddings, jellies—oh dear, what delicious things jellies are when you have never tasted them before! Then there was fruit—apples which, Miss Donnithorne told me, had grown and ripened in her own garden; and finally we cracked nuts and became excellent friends, sitting close to the fire. Nancy’s final entrance had been with coffee on a little tray. Miss Donnithorne poured out a cup for me and a cup for herself.“We’ll go out presently,” she said. “It’s a lovely day for a walk. I shall take you a good way and show you some of the beauties of the place. But what about your boots? Are they strong?”“Oh, pretty well,” I replied.“I can lend you some rubbers; but what size are your feet?”I pushed out one of my feet for inspection.“Dear, dear!” said Miss Donnithorne, “they’re bigger than mine. Mine are rather small, and yours—you will forgive me, but yours are enormous; they really are. Have you been attended to by a shoemaker?”“Oh, Hannah gets my boots for me,” I said. “She always has them made to order, as she says they last twice as long; and she always insists on having them made two sizes too large. She says she can’t be troubled by hearing me complain that they are too small.”“Dear me, child!” said Miss Donnithorne. “Do you know that you aggravate me more each moment?”“Aggravate you?” I answered.“Yes. You make something plainer and plainer. There! not a word more at present. But before I go upstairs, do tell me, was it Hannah or yourself who chosethat?”As she spoke she pointed to the red blouse and the brown skirt. She evidently thought of them as a costume, for she did not speak of them in the plural; she spoke of them as “that,” and if ever there was condemnation in a kind voice, it was when she uttered that word.“It was father who got them at Wallis’s,” I said. “I told him when I was coming to you that my clothes were rather shabby, and he bought them—he chose them himself.”“Bless him!” said Miss Donnithorne.She looked at me critically for a minute, and then she burst into a perfect shriek of laughter. I felt inclined to be offended. It had never occurred to me that anybody in all the world could laugh at the Professor; but Miss Donnithorne laughed till the tears rolled down her cheeks.“Mercy! Mercy me!” she repeated at intervals.When she had recovered herself she said, “My dear, you mustn’t be angry. I respect your father immensely, but his gift does not lie in the clothing of girls. Why, child, that is a woman’s skirt. Let me feel the texture.”She felt it between her finger and thumb.“Not at all the material for a lady,” was her comment. “That skirt is meant for a hard-working artisan’s wife. It is so harsh it makes me shudder as I touch it. A lady’s dress should always be soft, and not heavy.”“Father thought a great deal of the weight,” I could not help saying. “He thought it would keep me so warm.”“Bless him!” said Miss Donnithorne again. “But after all,” she continued, “the skirt is nothing to the blouse. My dear, I will be frank with you; there are some men who know nothing whatever about dress, and that blouse is—atrocious. We’ll get them both off, Rachel, or Dumps, or whatever you call yourself.”“But,” I said, “I have nothing else much to wear. I only brought this and my little, shabby everyday dress.”“Now, I wonder,” said Miss Donnithorne; but she did not utter her thought aloud. She became very reflective.“I should not be surprised,” she said under her breath. “Well, anyhow, we’ll go out in the shabby little things, for I couldn’t have you look a figure of fun walking through Chelmsford with me. That would be quite impossible.”“All right, Miss Donnithorne,” I said, inclined to be offended, although in my heart of hearts I had no love for the brown skirt and the red blouse.“That costume will do admirably for that Hannah of yours,” said Miss Donnithorne after another pause. “From what you tell me of that body, I should think it would suit her; but it’s not the thing for you.”“Only father—” I expostulated.“I’ll manage your father. Now go to your room, child, and get into your other things as fast as possible.”I went away, and Miss Donnithorne still continued to sit by the fire. Could I believe my own ears? I thought I heard her sigh when I got into the hall, and then I heard her laugh. I felt half-inclined to be offended; I was certainly very much puzzled. Truly my cheeks were red now. I looked at myself in the glass. No, I was not pretty. I saw at once now why people called me Dumps. It is a great trial for a girl when her nose is half an inch too short, and her eyes are too small, and her mouth a trifle too broad, and she has no special complexion and no special look of intelligence, and no wonderfully thick hair, and has no beautiful shades of colouring—when she is all made up of drabs and greys, and her nose is decidedly podgy, and her cheeks inclined to be too fat—and yet when all the time the poor girl has a feverish desire in her soul to be beautiful, when she thinks more of beauty of feature and beauty of form, and beauty, in fact, of every sort, than of anything else in the world. It was a girl with that sort of exterior who now looked into the round glass. It was an old-fashioned glass, but a very good one, and I, Dumps, could see myself quite distinctly, and knew at last that it was fit and right that I should have the name. It was absurd to call a creature like me Rachel. Was not the first Rachel always spoken of as one of the most beautiful women in all the world? Why should I dare to take that sacred name? Oh yes, I was Dumps. I would not be offended any longer when I was called by it. My figure very much matched my face, for it was squat and decidedly short for my age. In the hideous red blouse, and with that brown skirt, I looked my very worst. I was glad to take them off. Talk of heat and weight! I knew at last what it was to be too hot and to have too much to carry.I was delighted to be in my little, worn-out, but well-accustomed-to garments, and I ran down to Miss Donnithorne, feeling as though I, like Christian, had got rid of a heavy burden.
Father was really quite interested about my wardrobe. He asked me two or three questions during the few days which ensued between Wednesday and Saturday, and in particular said what good weight the brown skirt was, and what an age it would last me.
“But it’s just a wee bit too long for me,” I could not help remarking.
He raised his brows very high when I said this, and pushed his glasses up on his forehead. Then he said after a pause, “There’s no pleasing some people. Didn’t you tell me that you had outgrown your clothes, and wasn’t I once and for all going to put a stop to that sort of thing? Do you suppose that a man who is saving his money to send his sons to Oxford or Cambridge can afford to buy dresses often? That skirt leaves room for growth, and as it thins off with age it will be less heavy. It’s exactly the sort you ought to have, Dumps, and I won’t hear a word against it.”
“Of course not, father. It was very kind of you to buy it for me.”
“Perhaps you’d best travel in it,” he said.
But to this I objected, on the score that it might get injured in the train.
“Very true,” he remarked. “But, all the same, I should like Miss Donnithorne to see you looking nice. Well, you can put it on when you get there. Be sure you do that. Go straight up to your room and put on your brown skirt and your red blouse, and go down to her looking as my daughter ought to look.”
“Yes, father,” I said meekly.
The joyful day arrived. Father could not take me to the station himself; but Hannah and I went there in a cab. Hannah was terribly cross. She said she knew I’d come home “that spoilt as would be past bearing.”
“You’re going to that fat, vulgar body,” she said. “Oh, don’t you talk to me about it’s being genteel to put on flesh, for I know better. But, anyhow, you’ll be a good riddance while you are away, Dumps. I’ll have time to give the parlour a rare good turning out.”
“Oh Hannah,” I said, nestling up a little closer to her in the cab, “aren’t you ever a little bit sorry that I’m going away?”
“Well, to be sure, child,” she said, her eyes twinkling, “I’ve no fault to find with you. You can’t help your looks, and you can’t help your aggrawating manners, and you can’t help your perverse ways of going on. But there, there! you’re as you’re made, and I’ve no fault to find with you.”
This was a great deal from Hannah, and I was obliged to be satisfied with it.
“I don’t think I shall ever grow up vain,” I thought, “and I suppose I ought to be satisfied.”
By-and-by I was cosily travelling first-class, for father was peremptory on this point, down to Chelmsford. I had left smoky London behind me, and was in the country. It was very cold in the country; snow was over everything, and the whole place looked so white and so sweet, and I just pined for a breath of the fresh country air. So I flung open the window of the carriage nearest to me and poked out my head.
A poke of another sort was presently administered somewhere in my back, and turning, I saw a most irate old gentleman who had been sitting at the other end of the carriage.
“I’ll thank you, young person,” he said, “to shut that window without a moment’s delay. You must be mad to put your head out like that in such bitter weather. I’m certain to be attacked by bronchitis with your wilful and violent way of letting such extreme cold into the carriage.”
I shut the window in a great hurry and sat down, very red in the face. The old gentleman did not take any further notice of me; he buried himself behind his paper. After a minute or two I heard him sneeze, and when he sneezed he gave me a very angry glance. Then he coughed, and then he sneezed again; finally he buried himself once more in his paper.
By-and-by we got to Chelmsford. It was nice to see Miss Grace Donnithorne standing on the platform. She was so round and so jolly and good-natured-looking, and her eyes, which were like little black beads in the middle of her face, quite shone with happiness.
“There you are, you poor Dumps!” she said. “Hop out, dear—hop out.”
I sprang from the carriage to the platform.
“Where is your luggage, my dear?”
“I have it,” I said; “it is in a brown-paper parcel on the luggage-rack.”
I thought I heard Miss Donnithorne murmur some thing; but all she said was, “Give it to me, dear. Be quick, or the train will move on.”
So I lugged it out as best I could, and there I stood in my shabby grey tweed dress, with my little worn-out jacket and my small hat, clutching at the brown-paper parcel. It was fairly heavy, for I had had to put other things into it besides the now dress and the new jacket; but it was tied very securely with cord, and addressed in my father’s handwriting with my name to the care of Miss Grace Donnithorne, Hedgerow House.
“Now then, child,” said Miss Grace, “we’ll get into my pony-trap and drive home. Why, you poor thing, you’re as cold as charity; and no wonder—no wonder.”
She insisted on carrying the brown-paper parcel herself. Waiting outside the station was a very neat little cart drawn by a shaggy pony. There was a boy standing by the pony’s head. He was dressed in quite a smart sort of dress, which I afterwards discovered was called livery. He sprang forward when he saw Miss Donnithorne and took the parcel, which she told him to put carefully in the back of the carriage, and on no account to trample on it with his feet.
Then we both got in, and a great fur rug was wrapped round us, and a cloak of Miss Donnithorne’s fastened round my neck.
“Now you can’t possibly catch cold,” she said.—“Jump up behind, Jim.”
Jim obeyed. Miss Donnithorne took the reins, and off we flew.
Oh, how wonderful, how delightful was the sensation!
We got to the cottage in about a quarter of an hour. Miss Grace told me that although it was called Hedgerow House, it was really only a cottage; but I could not tell what the difference was. It was a long, low, rambling sort of house, all built in one floor. The walls were so completely covered with creepers that, even though it was winter, you could not see much of the original stone-work; and where there were no creepers in full leaf there was trellis-work, which was covered with the bare branches of what in summer, Miss Donnithorne told me, would be roses.
“Do roses really grow like that?” I asked.
“Oh yes,” she replied; “and jasmine and wistaria and clematis, and all sorts of other things.”
The dog that Miss Donnithorne had warned me about came out to meet us. He was a fox-terrier, with a very sharp nose black as coal, and all the rest of his body was snow-white, except his sparkling, melting, wonderful brown eyes. I must say his eyes flashed very angrily when he first saw me, but Miss Donnithorne said, “Down, Snap—down!” and then she laid her hand on Snap’s collar and said, “You’re to be good to this young lady, Snap.”
Snap, after glancing at me in a crooked sort of way, as though he were not at all sure that he would not prove the significance of his name, condescended to wag his tail very slightly.
Miss Donnithorne took me into a very pretty little sitting-room at one side of the pretty little square hall. This room was filled with all sorts of unaccountable things. There were glass cases filled with stuffed birds of gay plumage. Miss Donnithorne glanced at them.
“I’ll tell you their names presently,” she said. “My brother who died brought them to me from South America.”
There were three of these cases. There were also stuffed animals, a hare, a fox, and a dog, perched above doors and at the top of the bookcase. Where there were not these cases of stuffed creatures there were books, so that you really could not see one scrap of the original paper of the room.
“Is this the drawing-room?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t call it by that name,” said Miss Donnithorne. “I sit here because I have all my books and papers handy about the room. But come to the fire and warm yourself.”
Certainly the fire in that dear little grate looked very different from the dismal fire which Miss Donnithorne had seen in our big, fog-begrimed parlour. I came close to it, and I even so far forgot proprieties as to drop on my knees and to hold out my hands to the blaze.
“Chilblains, I declare!” said Miss Donnithorne, taking one of my hands between both her own. “The best cure for those is to bathe your hands once or twice a day in a very strong solution of salt and hot water. The water must be as hot as you can bear it. But the best cure of all is a good circulation.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Bless you, child! Don’t you know, and you go to school every day?”
I stood up; my hands were warm, and my feet were tingling with renewed life. I had a curious sensation that my nose, which was by no means my best feature, was very red, for it certainly felt hot. I turned round and said, “I am quite warm now.”
“Then you would like to go up to your room. Nancy will go with you. She’ll unpack your parcel for you.”
“Oh no, thank you,” I replied. Then I added, “Is Nancy one of your servants?”
“I have only one servant in this tiny house, my dear, and Nancy is the one. She is a very good-natured sort of girl, and quite pleased at the idea of your coming to stay with me. I treat her as a sort of friend, you see, as she and I are all alone in the house together.”
I began to like Miss Donnithorne better and better each moment. She was so jolly. Whenever she spoke her eyes sparkled as though they were laughing, while the rest of her face was grave. All the same, I did not want Nancy, and I said so.
“I can help myself,” I argued. “We have only got Hannah in our big house.”
“Well, well, dear! if you can manage for yourself, I am the last one to wish you to do otherwise,” said Miss Donnithorne. “Here is your parcel; you can take it upstairs.”
“But how am I to find my way to my room?”
“You cannot lose it, my dear. Go up that little staircase, and when you reach the landing you will see an open door. Go through that doorway and you will be in your own bedroom. There’s no other bedroom on that landing, so you cannot miss it, can you?”
“No,” I replied, laughing.
I seized my brown-paper parcel and ran upstairs. It certainly was nice in the country, and how delicious a small house was! One could be warm in a small house; it was impossible to be warm in that great, rambling, old-fashioned house which belonged to the college and where father and the boys and I lived.
I found my bedroom. Now, girls who are accustomed to nice bedrooms all their lives take, I suppose, no particular interest in another nice bedroom when they are suddenly introduced into it. But my room at home could never, under any pretext, be considered nice. For some extraordinary reason, big as the house was, I had always slept next to Hannah in one of the attics. There was no earthly reason for this, except perhaps that when I was a child I was nearer to Hannah in case I should turn ill. It had never occurred to me to change my room, and it had certainly never occurred to anybody else to make it comfortable. There was a bedstead and a bed of a sort, and there was a looking-glass, with a crack right down the middle, which stood on a little deal table. The deal table was, as a rule, covered with a cloth, which seldom looked white on account of the London fogs. There was a huge wooden press—it could certainly not be called by the modern name of wardrobe—in which I kept my clothes; and there was a wooden chair on which I placed my candle at night, and that was about all. One side of the room had a sloping roof, and the window was at the best of times of minute proportions. But the room itself had a vast amount of unoccupied space; it was a huge room, and terribly ugly.
Never had I realised that fact until I went into the sweet little apartment which Miss Grace Donnithorne had ordered to be got ready for me. In the first place, its window looked out on a pure expanse of snow-covered country, and I jumped softly up and down as I gazed at that view, for the sun was shining on it, and the sky overhead was blue—blue as sapphires. Then in the grate there was a fire—a fire just as bright as the one in the little sitting-room with the stuffed birds downstairs; and all the hangings of the room were of white dimity, which had evidently been put up fresh from the wash. It was by no means a grand room; it was simple of the simple, but it did look sweet. There was a little nosegay of chrysanthemums on the dressing-table; there were dainty hangings round my snow-white couch; and on the floor was an old-fashioned carpet made of different shades of crimson, and very thick and soft it felt to the feet. The china in the room was very pretty, being white with scarlet berries on it; it all looked Christmasy and wintry and yet cheery, like the sort of Christmases one reads of in the fairy-tales of long ago.
I unfastened my parcel. I had just taken my long brown skirt out of its wrappings, and was shaking it out preparatory to putting it on, when I heard Miss Grace say from the bottom of the stairs, “Dumps, how long will it be before you are downstairs? I am just having the cutlets dished up.”
“Oh dear!” I said to myself.—“I’ll be down in a very few minutes,” I answered.
Now, I had promised father that I would certainly go down in the brown skirt and red blouse, and I would not break that promise to him for the world; so I quickly divested myself of my shabby little travelling costume and got into the brown skirt. It was a little tight in the waist, for I must say mine was very broad, but in every other single particular it was too big for me; it was so long in front that I could scarcely walk without stumbling. Still, I had no doubt that I made a very imposing figure in it. It was thick, it felt warm, and I remembered my father’s remark that there would be room for growth, and that the thinning process would eventually make it not quite so heavy.
But the brown skirt, although a partial success, was nothing at all to the red blouse. I have said that it was a brick-red, and it did not suit my face. It was of common material, made with thick folds, and the sleeves were much too long. I got into it somehow, and cast a glance at myself in the glass. How funny I looked!—my head not too tidy; my face flushed, in by no means a becoming way; with a brick-red blouse and a brown skirt. Nevertheless, I was dressed, and there was a sort of satisfaction in feeling grown-up just for once. I wished that I had had time to plait my hair and pin it round my head; then I might have impressed Miss Grace Donnithorne with the fact that not a child but a grown-up young lady had come to visit her. But as there was no time for that, and as there was a most appetising smell coming up the narrow stairs, I flew down just as I was, in my new costume. I very nearly stumbled as I ran downstairs, but I saved myself by picking up my skirt, and then I entered the little drawing-room.
“Come, come, child!” said Miss Donnithorne. “Not that way; come into this room now.”
I turned and crossed the little hall and entered the dining-room. The dining-room was twice the size of the little room where the stuffed birds dwelt. It was furnished in quite a modern fashion, and looked very nice indeed to me. The cloth on the table was so white that it did not even look dirty by contrast with the snow outside, and the silver shone—oh, like a number of looking-glasses; and the knives were so clean and new-looking.
Miss Grace just opened her eyes for the tenth of a second when I entered the room, and I wondered what reflection passed through her mind, but she gave utterance to none. She invited me to seat myself, and I had the most delicious meal I had ever partaken of in the whole course of my life. Nancy flew in and out, serving us with more and more dainties: puddings, jellies—oh dear, what delicious things jellies are when you have never tasted them before! Then there was fruit—apples which, Miss Donnithorne told me, had grown and ripened in her own garden; and finally we cracked nuts and became excellent friends, sitting close to the fire. Nancy’s final entrance had been with coffee on a little tray. Miss Donnithorne poured out a cup for me and a cup for herself.
“We’ll go out presently,” she said. “It’s a lovely day for a walk. I shall take you a good way and show you some of the beauties of the place. But what about your boots? Are they strong?”
“Oh, pretty well,” I replied.
“I can lend you some rubbers; but what size are your feet?”
I pushed out one of my feet for inspection.
“Dear, dear!” said Miss Donnithorne, “they’re bigger than mine. Mine are rather small, and yours—you will forgive me, but yours are enormous; they really are. Have you been attended to by a shoemaker?”
“Oh, Hannah gets my boots for me,” I said. “She always has them made to order, as she says they last twice as long; and she always insists on having them made two sizes too large. She says she can’t be troubled by hearing me complain that they are too small.”
“Dear me, child!” said Miss Donnithorne. “Do you know that you aggravate me more each moment?”
“Aggravate you?” I answered.
“Yes. You make something plainer and plainer. There! not a word more at present. But before I go upstairs, do tell me, was it Hannah or yourself who chosethat?”
As she spoke she pointed to the red blouse and the brown skirt. She evidently thought of them as a costume, for she did not speak of them in the plural; she spoke of them as “that,” and if ever there was condemnation in a kind voice, it was when she uttered that word.
“It was father who got them at Wallis’s,” I said. “I told him when I was coming to you that my clothes were rather shabby, and he bought them—he chose them himself.”
“Bless him!” said Miss Donnithorne.
She looked at me critically for a minute, and then she burst into a perfect shriek of laughter. I felt inclined to be offended. It had never occurred to me that anybody in all the world could laugh at the Professor; but Miss Donnithorne laughed till the tears rolled down her cheeks.
“Mercy! Mercy me!” she repeated at intervals.
When she had recovered herself she said, “My dear, you mustn’t be angry. I respect your father immensely, but his gift does not lie in the clothing of girls. Why, child, that is a woman’s skirt. Let me feel the texture.”
She felt it between her finger and thumb.
“Not at all the material for a lady,” was her comment. “That skirt is meant for a hard-working artisan’s wife. It is so harsh it makes me shudder as I touch it. A lady’s dress should always be soft, and not heavy.”
“Father thought a great deal of the weight,” I could not help saying. “He thought it would keep me so warm.”
“Bless him!” said Miss Donnithorne again. “But after all,” she continued, “the skirt is nothing to the blouse. My dear, I will be frank with you; there are some men who know nothing whatever about dress, and that blouse is—atrocious. We’ll get them both off, Rachel, or Dumps, or whatever you call yourself.”
“But,” I said, “I have nothing else much to wear. I only brought this and my little, shabby everyday dress.”
“Now, I wonder,” said Miss Donnithorne; but she did not utter her thought aloud. She became very reflective.
“I should not be surprised,” she said under her breath. “Well, anyhow, we’ll go out in the shabby little things, for I couldn’t have you look a figure of fun walking through Chelmsford with me. That would be quite impossible.”
“All right, Miss Donnithorne,” I said, inclined to be offended, although in my heart of hearts I had no love for the brown skirt and the red blouse.
“That costume will do admirably for that Hannah of yours,” said Miss Donnithorne after another pause. “From what you tell me of that body, I should think it would suit her; but it’s not the thing for you.”
“Only father—” I expostulated.
“I’ll manage your father. Now go to your room, child, and get into your other things as fast as possible.”
I went away, and Miss Donnithorne still continued to sit by the fire. Could I believe my own ears? I thought I heard her sigh when I got into the hall, and then I heard her laugh. I felt half-inclined to be offended; I was certainly very much puzzled. Truly my cheeks were red now. I looked at myself in the glass. No, I was not pretty. I saw at once now why people called me Dumps. It is a great trial for a girl when her nose is half an inch too short, and her eyes are too small, and her mouth a trifle too broad, and she has no special complexion and no special look of intelligence, and no wonderfully thick hair, and has no beautiful shades of colouring—when she is all made up of drabs and greys, and her nose is decidedly podgy, and her cheeks inclined to be too fat—and yet when all the time the poor girl has a feverish desire in her soul to be beautiful, when she thinks more of beauty of feature and beauty of form, and beauty, in fact, of every sort, than of anything else in the world. It was a girl with that sort of exterior who now looked into the round glass. It was an old-fashioned glass, but a very good one, and I, Dumps, could see myself quite distinctly, and knew at last that it was fit and right that I should have the name. It was absurd to call a creature like me Rachel. Was not the first Rachel always spoken of as one of the most beautiful women in all the world? Why should I dare to take that sacred name? Oh yes, I was Dumps. I would not be offended any longer when I was called by it. My figure very much matched my face, for it was squat and decidedly short for my age. In the hideous red blouse, and with that brown skirt, I looked my very worst. I was glad to take them off. Talk of heat and weight! I knew at last what it was to be too hot and to have too much to carry.
I was delighted to be in my little, worn-out, but well-accustomed-to garments, and I ran down to Miss Donnithorne, feeling as though I, like Christian, had got rid of a heavy burden.