LITMIR.BIZ

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her blue brocade and heavy gold ornaments, she reclined languidly on a large easy-chair, saying with half-closed eyes—

      ‘Well, Phœbe, Miss Fennimore has told you of Miss Charlecote’s invitation.’

      ‘Yes, mamma.  I am very, very much obliged!’

      ‘You know you are not to fancy yourself come out,’ said Juliana, the second sister, who had a good tall figure, and features and complexion not far from beauty, but marred by a certain shrewish tone and air.

      ‘Oh, no,’ answered Phœbe; ‘but with Miss Charlecote that will make no difference.’

      ‘Probably not,’ said Juliana; ‘for of course you will see nobody but a set of old maids and clergymen and their wives.’

      ‘She need not go far for old maids,’ whispered Bertha to Maria.

      ‘Pray, in which class do you reckon the Sandbrooks?’ said Phœbe, smiling; ‘for she chiefly goes to meet them.’

      ‘She may go!’ said Juliana, scornfully; ‘but Lucilla Sandbrook is far past attending to her!’

      ‘I wonder whether the Charterises will take any notice of Phœbe?’ exclaimed Augusta.

      ‘My dear,’ said Mrs. Fulmort, waking slowly to another idea, ‘I will tell Boodle to talk to—what’s your maid’s name?—about your dresses.’

      ‘Oh, mamma,’ interposed Juliana, ‘it will be only poking about the exhibitions with Miss Charlecote.  You may have that plaid silk of mine that I was going to have worn out abroad, half-price for her.’

      Bertha fairly made a little stamp at Juliana, and clenched her fist.

      If Phœbe dreaded anything in the way of dress, it was Juliana’s half-price.

      ‘My dear, your papa would not like her not to be well fitted out,’ said her mother; ‘and Honora Charlecote always has such handsome things.  I wish Boodle could put mine on like hers.’

      ‘Oh, very well!’ said Juliana, rather offended; ‘only it should be understood what is to be done if the Charterises ask her to any of their parties.  There will be such mistakes and confusion if she meets any one we know; and you particularly objected to having her brought forward.’

      Phœbe’s eye was a little startled, and Bertha set her front teeth together on edge, and looked viciously at Juliana.

      ‘My dear, Honora Charlecote never goes out,’ said Mrs. Fulmort.

      ‘If she should, you understand, Phœbe,’ said Juliana.

      Coffee came in at the moment, and Augusta criticized the strength of it, which made a diversion, during which Bertha slipped out of the room, with a face replete with mischievous exultation.

      ‘Are not you going to play to-night, my dears?’ asked Mrs. Fulmort.  ‘What was that duet I heard you practising?’

      ‘Come, Juliana,’ said the elder sister, ‘I meant to go over it again; I am not satisfied with my part.’

      ‘I have to write a note,’ said Juliana, moving off to another table; whereupon Phœbe ventured to propose herself as a substitute, and was accepted.

      Maria sat entranced, with her mouth open; and presently Mrs. Fulmort looked up from a kind of doze to ask who was playing.  For some moments she had no answer.  Maria was too much awed for speech in the drawing-room; and though Bertha had come back, she had her back to her mother, and did not hear.  Mrs. Fulmort exerted herself to sit up and turn her head.

      ‘Was that Phœbe?’ she said.  ‘You have a clear, good touch, my dear, as they used to say I had when I was at school at Bath.  Play another of your pieces, my dear.’

      ‘I am ready now, Augusta,’ said Juliana, advancing.

      Little girls were not allowed at the piano when officers might be coming in from the dining-room, so Maria’s face became vacant again, for Juliana’s music awoke no echoes within her.

      Phœbe beckoned her to a remote ottoman, a receptacle for the newspapers of the week, and kept her turning over the Illustrated News, an unfailing resource with her, but powerless to occupy Bertha after the first Saturday; and Bertha, turning a deaf ear to the assurance that there was something very entertaining about a tiger-hunt, stood, solely occupied by eyeing Juliana.

      Was she studying ‘come-out’ life as she watched her sisters surrounded by the gentlemen who presently herded round the piano?

      It was nearly the moment when the young ones were bound to withdraw, when Mervyn, coming hastily up to their ottoman, had almost stumbled over Maria’s foot.

      ‘Beg pardon.  Oh, it was only you!  What a cow it is!’ said he, tossing over the papers.

      ‘What are you looking for, Mervyn?’ asked Phœbe.

      ‘An advertisement—Bell’s Life for the 3rd.  That rascal, Mears, must have taken it.’

      She found it for him, and likewise the advertisement, which he, missing once, was giving up in despair.

      ‘I say,’ he observed, while she was searching, ‘so you are to chip the shell.’

      ‘I’m only going to London—I’m not coming out.’

      ‘Gammon!’ he said, with an odd wink.  ‘You need never go in again, like the what’s-his-name in the fairy tale, or you are a sillier child than I take you for.  They’—nodding at the piano—‘are getting a terrible pair of old cats, and we want something young and pretty about.’

      With this unusual compliment, Phœbe, seeing the way clear to the door, rose to depart, most reluctantly followed by Bertha, and more willingly by Maria, who began, the moment they were in the hall—

      ‘Phœbe, why do they get a couple of terrible old cats?  I don’t like them.  I shall be afraid.’

      ‘Mervyn didn’t mean—’ began perplexed Phœbe, cut short by Bertha’s boisterous laughter.  ‘Oh, Maria, what a goose you are!  You’ll be the death of me some day!  Why, Juliana and Augusta are the cats themselves.  Oh, dear! I wanted to kiss Mervyn for saying so.  Oh, wasn’t it fun!  And now, Maria,—oh! if I could have stayed a moment longer!’

      ‘Bertha, Bertha, not such a noise in the hall.  Come, Maria; mind, you must not tell anybody.  Bertha, come,’ expostulated Phœbe, trying to drag her sister to the red baize door; but Bertha stood, bending nearly double, exaggerating the helplessness of her paroxysms of laughter.

      ‘Well, at least the cat will have something to scratch her,’ she gasped out.  ‘Oh, I did so want to stay and see!’

      ‘Have you been playing any tricks?’ exclaimed Phœbe, with consternation, as Bertha’s deportment recurred to her.

      ‘Tricks?—I couldn’t help it.  Oh, listen, Phœbe!’ cried Bertha, with her wicked look of triumph.  ‘I brought home such a lovely sting-nettle for Miss Fennimore’s peacock caterpillar; and when I heard how kind dear Juliana was to you about your visit to London, I thought she really must have it for a reward; so I ran away, and slily tucked it into her bouquet; and I did so hope she would take it up to fiddle with when the gentlemen talk to her,’ said the elf, with an irresistibly comic imitation of Juliana’s manner towards gentlemen.

      ‘Bertha, this is beyond—’ began Phœbe.

      ‘Didn’t you sting your fingers?’ asked Maria.

      Bertha stuck out her fat pink paws, embellished with sundry white lumps.  ‘All pleasure,’ said she, ‘thinking of the jump Juliana will give, and how nicely it serves her.’

      Phœbe was already on her way back to the drawing-rooms; Bertha sprang after, but in vain.  Never would she have risked the success of her trick, could she have guessed that Phœbe would have the temerity to return to the company!

      Phœbe glided in without waiting for the sense of awkwardness, though she knew she should have to cross the whole room, and she durst not ask any one to bring the dangerous bouquet

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