“Well, I hope to get you to change your minds yet; but I will not order the presentation dresses to-day.”
“That’s a dear. I knew you would submit. – She is the best little mother in the whole world,” said Eileen, rapturously kissing her parent, and then clasping Marjorie’s hand.
“Then, you will give in all round, mammy dear?” said Marjorie.
“Suppose I say no?” answered Mrs. Chetwynd.
“Then I am afraid – ” said Eileen. She glanced at Marjorie, and Marjorie nodded.
Mrs. Chetwynd suddenly rose.
“Girls,” she said, “don’t say what you are just about to say. I can guess what it is, and I am not prepared to listen. Until you are of age it is your duty to obey me. Notwithstanding your father’s will, and the improper allowance which I am forced to give you both, as long as you are under my roof you must be clothed as I wish, and you must not go to places that I disapprove of. My poor, dear, misguided children, a woman’s true aim when she reaches maturity is to marry a good husband, and to have a happy home of her own.”
“But I never intend to marry,” said Marjorie. “I have not the faintest idea of putting myself under the control of any man. I mean to keep my liberty and have a jolly good, useful time.”
“And so do I,” said Eileen. “I mean to have a very full and very busy life, mother.”
“Ditto,” cried Marjorie.
“Letitia has not yet spoken,” said Mrs. Chetwynd. – “What are your wishes, my love?”
“Well, of course, Aunt Helen, I should like a society-life very much.”
“But you’re just not going to have it, Lettie,” said Eileen. “You’ll have to do exactly what we do. We have no idea of having our own mother fagged to death; an old woman like mother taken out day and night at all hours, just to give you a jolly time.”
“But, really, my dears, I am not an old woman,” said Mrs. Chetwynd indignantly.
“Well, mother, you are not as young as you used to be. You are forty, if you are a day, and no one at forty can be called a chicken. It’s much more healthy for you to go to bed in good time. Oh, I have read a lot about society and all its trash. It just encourages one to be terribly immoral.”
“Immoral! my dear Eileen. It’s awful to hear you speak.”
“But it’s true, mother. For instance, people tell no end of fibs – lies I call them. They say they are not at home when they are; they pretend to be delighted to see a person who in reality they loathe. Oh, I am acquainted with the ghastly round; and if you think I am going to let myself in for it you are mistaken. But, dear old mammy, you shan’t be worried any longer; we will go out with you now, and we’ll be as good as gold, and you shall get us each a new dark-blue serge dress and a new sailor hat, and a pair of thick dogskin gloves. Surely that is enough.”
“And what about evening dresses, and Sunday dresses, and visiting dresses?” said Mrs. Chetwynd.
“As to Sunday dresses,” cried Marjorie, “I don’t see why neat serge dresses should not do quite well for church; and as to visiting dresses, we do not intend to visit in the ordinary sense. The friend who does not wish to see us in our serge costumes we do not intend to cultivate.”
“There are still evening dresses, my dear.”
“But, mother, you are not going to take us out to dinners?”
“You must have one or two dinner dresses,” said Mrs. Chetwynd, “and that is an end of the matter. Go upstairs and put on your hats. I am ashamed to go out with you as matters now stand.”
The two girls left the room linking their arms together. Letitia remained behind.
“May I ask, Letitia,” said Mrs. Chetwynd, “when this madness seized Marjorie and Eileen?”
“It has been coming on gradually,” said Letitia. “It is very bad, I know. I was afraid you would suffer a good deal when they explained themselves.”
“But when did it begin?”
“Well, two or three girls – Americans, I think – joined the school last term, and Marjorie and Eileen became great friends with them; and just about then they began to change. They were always careless with regard to their dress, and would not allow Miss Ross – our English teacher who had us under her special care – to spend the money which you sent on dress at all.”
“And do you mean to tell me that Miss Ross consulted them?”
“Well, Aunt Helen, they had an extraordinary way of pleading their own cause. I cannot understand it. They have saved a good deal of money, if that is any satisfaction.”
“None whatever, child. I have got more money than I know what to do with, and I choose my girls to look nice. Letitia, what a pity it is you are not my own child.”
“For some reasons I wish I were, Aunt Helen.”
“You are so very neat, dear, so very dainty – that is the only word for it. What am I to do with those other two?”
“I am dreadfully afraid you will have to give them their own way.”
“Their own way! Nonsense, my dear! impossible. Children, only eighteen.”
“But old enough, according to your own showing, Aunt Helen, to be presented to the Queen, to enter society, and to marry if suitable husbands come to the fore.”
“Of course; but they would be presented to the Queen by their mother; they would enter society under their mother’s wing; and if they married, their husbands would look after them. Now to allow those wild imps, those irresponsible girls, to have their own way is not to be heard of for a single moment.”
“Well, Aunt Helen, I am sure it will come right in the end. They are queer, obstinate, out-of-the-way girls; but they have got fine characters, and would not willingly pain you. The only thing is that they look at life from a totally different standpoint. I’ll have a right good talk with them, so try not to fret. I will put it to them that it is their bounden duty to yield to you. They often mind what I say when they won’t mind their elders. But is not that the carriage? Had not I better get ready?”
CHAPTER VI – BELLE THE SAGE
Belle Acheson was an ideal scholarly girl of the latter end of the nineteenth century. She wore spectacles, not pince-nez. Her hair was parted smoothly on her forehead and done up in a tiny knot or dab at the back of her neck. Her forehead was high, her complexion sallow, her eyes short-sighted and small. She had a long upper lip, and her mouth was thin and wide. In figure she was extremely spare, her feet and hands were large, and her shoulders angular. She was a plain girl, and she gloried in the fact. Belle Acheson lived altogether for the joys of intellect; to learn was her delight. The more abstruse, the more dry, the science, the more eagerly did Belle absorb it, and make it part of herself. She was a good classical scholar, and was also fond of modern languages. She studied Shakespeare, not for his beauty of language, but for his archaisms. She adored musty professors, and never had a good word to say for an athletic man. Her ambition was to carry off double-firsts, and some people thought that she had a fair chance of obtaining this blue ribbon.
Belle was an inmate of St. Wode’s College, Wingfield. There were four halls of residence at St. Wode’s, and Belle occupied an attic in North Hall. She had been there now for three terms, and had already made a profound impression on her tutors. She amassed knowledge with great rapidity. No nut was too hard for her to crack.
Now, if there was a girl in the entire of England that Mrs. Chetwynd loathed it was Belle Acheson. Mrs. Acheson was Mrs. Chetwynd’s old friend. Their husbands had fought side by side in the same campaigns in India. They had belonged to the same regiment. She felt that nothing would induce her to desert her old friend; but alas! that old friend’s daughter! It was fearful to think