Margaret Maliphant

								

patronizingly, that although she did not hold with bare arms and necks
for modest females, she never would have thought that I should have
"dressed up" so well. Mother bade her begone, but I think she was
pleased.
"Dear me!" said she, looking at me. "I recollect buying that silk.
It must have been in '52, when father took me up to town to see the
Exhibition. It was cheap for the good silk it is. It has made up very
well."
She turned me all round. Then she went to her jewel-case, unlocked it,
and took out a row of red coral beads.
"That's what you want with that dress," said she, fastening them round
my throat. "And you shall have them for your own. Red-haired women
ought to wear coral, folk say. Though for my part, I always thought it
was putting on too many colors."
How well I remember my pleasure at that gift! Joyce wanted to persuade
me not to wear them; she said the pale green of the frock was prettier
without the red beads. But I wouldn't listen to her; I was too pleased
with them, and I do not believe that it was entirely owing to gratified
vanity; I think a little of it was pleasure that mother thought my
appearance worth caring for.
I should not have thought it worth caring for myself two days ago, and
I should not have cared whether mother did or not. But something had
happened to me. Was it the sight of Joyce and her lover that had made
me think of myself as a woman? I cannot tell. All I know is that when
we walked into the squire's ball-room a quarter of an hour afterwards,
I felt my face flame as I saw his gaze rest upon me for a moment, and
I longed most heartily to be back again in my high-necked homespun
frock, with no corals round my throat at all. So inconsistent are we at
nineteen!
Fortunately my awakening self-consciousness was soon put to flight by
other more engrossing emotions. There was a fair sprinkling of people
already when we got into the room, and more were arriving every moment.
Mr. Farnham and the maiden sister with whom he lived were going busily
about welcoming the squire's guests almost as though they were the
host and hostess themselves: he was the Conservative member. A quiet,
inoffensive old gentleman himself, who would have been nothing and
nobody without the squire; but blessed with a most officious lady for
relative, who took the whole neighborhood under her wing.
She rather annoyed me by the way she had of trading on the squire's
support of her brother. He supported her brother because he was a
Conservative, not at all because he was Mr. Farnham, or even Miss
Farnham's brother.
Poor Mr. Broderick, I dare say, if the truth had been known, he must
often heartily have longed to get rid of them. But the old thing was
a good soul in her way, if it was a dictatorial, loud-voiced way,
and was very active among the poor, although it was not always in the
manner which they liked.
She and mother invariably quarrelled over the advantages of