"Nonsense, mamma!" said Miss Loftus, "I don"t believe Miss Grahame wants to lie down."
"Oh, no, indeed!" cried Hildegarde, thankful for the interruption. "I am used to walking, you know, Mrs. Loftus. I always walk, everywhere. I like it very much better than driving; besides," she added, "we have no horses, so I should have to walk in any case."
"I think it so dangerous!" said Mrs. Loftus, with a compa.s.sionate shake of the head. "In the heat of the day, as I said, the spinal marrow; so important, my dear! and towards evening there is a chill in the air, malaria, all kinds of dreadful things. I shall make a point of picking you up whenever I am driving by--I drive by nearly every day--and taking you out."
"Oh--thank you!" cried poor Hildegarde, an abyss opening at her feet.
"You are very kind, but I could not! I am so busy--and walking is my delight."
The announcement of lunch created a diversion, to the great relief of our heroine. Mr. Loftus appeared, a small, shrivelled man, with sharp eyes, whose idea of making himself agreeable was to criticise each article of food as it came on the table.
"Very weak bouillon, Mrs. Loftus" (he called it "bullion"). "Very weak!
greasy, too! Not fit to put on the table. What"s this? chicken? Fowl, I should say! Rooster, Mrs. L.! Is this your twelve-dollar cook? Not a thing Miss Grahame can eat! She"ll go and tell old Ferrers how we gave her roast rooster, see if she don"t! I hear you"re very thick with old Ferrers, Miss Grahame. Old Grizzly Bruin, _I_ call him. Good name, too!
he! he!"
Hildegarde blushed scarlet, and wondered what her mother would say in her place. All she could do was to murmur that the chicken was very nice indeed, and to hope that she did not show more of her disgust than was proper. The luncheon was very fine, in spite of Mr. Loftus"s depreciation; and when it came to the dessert, he changed his tune, and descanted on the qualities of "my peaches," "my nectarines," and "my gardener."
"You don"t eat enough, Miss Grahame!" was his comment. "No need to stint yourself here; plenty for all, and more where that came from."
But here Miss Loftus came to the rescue, and with a "Don"t be tiresome, puppa!" changed the conversation, and began to talk of the Worth gowns she had seen in New York, on her last visit.
"Which do you admire most, Worth or Felix?" she asked, after a graphic description of some marvellous gown which fitted the fortunate owner "as if she had been poured into it. Absolutely _poured_, Miss Grahame!"
"I--I really don"t know," Hildegarde confessed meekly. "I never can tell one dressmaker"s style from another. If a gown is pretty, that is all I think about it."
"Oh! if you have never studied these things, of course!" said the fair Leonie indulgently. "I went to Madame Vivien"s school, you see, and we had a regular hour for studying fashions. I can tell a Worth or a Felix or a Donovan gown as far as I can see it."
"Did you like Madame Vivien"s school?" asked Hildegarde.
"She ought to!" exclaimed Mr. Loftus. "It cost enough, I can tell you."
"Oh, it is the best school in the city, of course," said Leonie complacently. "We had a very good time, a set of us that were there.
They called us the Highflyers, and I suppose we had rather top-lofty notions. Anyway, we were Madame"s favourites, because we had _the air_, she always said. She couldn"t endure a dowdy girl, and she dressed beautifully herself. There were two or three girls that were regular digs, with their noses always in their books, and Madame couldn"t bear them. "Miss Antrim," she was always saving to one of them, "it is true that you know your lesson, but your gown is b.u.t.toned awry, and it fits as if the miller had made it." He! he!"
"And--and did you care for study?" Hildegarde asked, mentally sympathising with Miss Antrim, though conscious that she would never have been allowed to go to school with a gown b.u.t.toned awry.
"Oh! I liked French," said Miss Loftus, "and history pretty well, when it wasn"t too poky. But you didn"t have to study at Madame Vivien"s unless you wanted to."
"What Leonie went most for was manners," explained Mrs. Loftus, taking a large mouthful of mayonnaise, and continuing her remarks while eating it. "Elegant manners they teach at Madame Vivien"s."
"How to enter a room well,"--Leonie enumerated the points on her taper fingers,--"how to salute and take leave of a hostess, how to order a dinner,--those were some of the most important things. We took turns in making up _menus_, and prizes were given for the best."
"Leonie took the prize for the best minew!" exclaimed Mrs. Loftus, triumphantly. "Tell Miss Grahame your prize minew, Leonie."
Nothing loth, Leonie described the dinner at length, from little-neck clams to coffee; and a very fine dinner it was.
"Hm!" grunted Mr. Loftus, "better dinner than we ever get from your twelve-dollar cook, Mrs. L. Hm! Fine dinners on paper, I dare say. Hand me that salad! Why don"t you give Miss Grahame some more salad? She ain"t eating anything at all."
"Then we had lectures on the Art of Dress," continued the fair student of Madame Vivien"s. "Those were very interesting."
"Well, dress does change, the most of anything!" exclaimed Mrs. Loftus.
"To see the difference now from when I was a girl! Why, when I was married I had thirty-five yards of silk in my wedding dress, and now n.o.body don"t have more than ten or twelve. Almost too scant to cover "em, it seems sometimes."
"Thirty-five yards, mamma!" exclaimed her daughter. "You"re joking!"
"Not a mite!" Mrs. Loftus said firmly. "Thirty-five yards of white satin, and trimmed with four whole pieces of lace and three hundred and eighty-two bows." The two girls exclaimed in wonder, and Mrs. Loftus continued in high good-humour. "Yes, a dress was a dress in those days.
Why, I had one walking dress, a brown silk it was, with fifty yards in it."
"But how was it possible?" cried Hildegarde. "Did you wear crinoline?"
"No," was the reply, "not a mite of hoop-skirt; but things were very full, you see, Miss Grahame. That brown dress, now; it had a deep side-plaiting all round, and an overskirt, very full too, and the back very deep, flounced, scalloped, and trimmed with narrow piping, looped in each corner with scallops. There was a deep fringe round the basque and overskirt, and coming up from the postilion (that was deep, too), to loop on the left shoulder."
"Well, it sounds _awful_!" said Leonie frankly. "You must have been a perfect sight, mamma!"
"She was better-looking than you are, or ever will be!" snarled Mr.
Loftus. "Are you goin" to sit here all day talkin" about women"s folderols? I have to pay for "em, and I guess that"s all I want to know about "em."
Glad enough was Hildegarde when four o"clock came, and she could plead an appointment to meet her mother at a certain turn of the road, as they were going for a walk together.
"More walking!" cried Mrs. Loftus. "You"ll have a fever, I"m certain of it. I don"t think girls ought _ever_ to walk, unless it"s a little turn in the park while the horses are waiting, or something of that sort."
She begged Hildegarde to wait till the horses were harnessed, but our heroine was firm, and finally departed, leaving her good-natured hostess shaking her head in the doorway, like a mandarin in wine-coloured satin.
As she turned the corner by the gilded iron gates, Hildegarde was startled by the apparition of a small boy in brown corduroy, sitting on a post and swinging his legs.
Hildegarde was fond of boys. One of her two best friends was a boy, and she had a little sweetheart in Maine, whose name was Benny, and who loved her with all the ardour of four years old. This boy must be six or seven, she thought. He had red hair, a round, rosy, freckled face, and two eyes so blue and so bright that the very meeting them made her smile. Her smile was answered by a flash, which lighted up the whole face, and subsided instantly, leaving preternatural gravity.
"How do you do?" said Hildegarde. "Is it fun sitting there?"
"No!" said the boy; and down he came. Then shyness seized him; he hung his head and considered his toes attentively.
"My name is Hilda," continued our heroine. "Do you think it is a nice name?"
He nodded, still intent on the boots.
"But I don"t know what your name is," she went on sadly. "I should like to tell you about my puppy, if you would walk along by me, but you see I can"t, because I don"t know your name."
"Hugh Allen," said the lad briefly.
"Hugh!" cried Hildegarde, her cheek flushing and her eyes softening.
"That was my dear father"s name. We must be friends, Hugh, for the name"s sake. Come along, laddie!"
The boy came, and walked in silence by her side, occasionally stealing a glance at the kind, bright face so much higher up than his own.
"Well, my puppy," said Hildegarde, as if she were continuing a conversation. "His name was Patsy, and he was such a funny puppy,--all white, with a great big head, and paws almost as big, and a mouth large enough to swallow--oh! I don"t know what! a watermelon, perhaps. I loved him very much. He used to gnaw my boots, and nibble the skirt of my dress; but, of course, I didn"t mind, for I knew he was cutting his teeth, poor dear, and couldn"t help it. But when he gnawed all the corners off the leather chairs in the dining-room, my mother dear didn"t like it, and she said Patsy must go. Then my father said he would take him to his office every day, and keep him out of mischief, and then I could take the dear for a good walk in the afternoon, and have a comfortable time with him, and he could sleep in the shed. Well, I thought this was a delightful plan, and the next day Patsy went off with papa, as pleased and happy as possible. Oh, dear! Hugh, what do you think that puppy did?"
"Perhaps he bit his legs," suggested Hugh, with a gleam of delight in his blue eyes.
"Oh, no!" said Hildegarde. "He wouldn"t have dared to do that, for he was a sad coward, my poor Patsy. My father left him shut up in the office while he went to lunch; and as the day was mild (though it was winter), he left his new ulster on a chair, where he had laid it when he first came in. Hugh, when he came back, he found the ulster--it was a stout heavy one--he found it all torn into little pieces, and the pieces piled in a heap, and Patsy lying on top of them."