The Three Miss Kings. Ada Cambridge
many questions, and that she came from some motive of curiosity to pry into our affairs. She was certainly a little impertinent, I thought. But then, perhaps, ladies in 'the world' don't look at these things as we have been accustomed to do," added Elizabeth humbly.
"I don't think they do," said Paul.
By this time they had reached the gate through which Patty and Eleanor had passed before them out of the gardens. As they silently emerged into the road, they saw the pair flitting along the pavement a considerable distance ahead of them, and when they turned the corner into Myrtle Street both the slender black figures had disappeared. Paul wondered to see himself so irritated by this trifling and inevitable circumstance. He felt that it would have done him good to speak to Patty, if it were only to quarrel with her.
Elizabeth bade him good-night when she reached the gate of No. 6, where the hall door stood open – putting her warm, strong hand with motherly benevolence into his.
"Good-night, Miss King. I am so glad to have seen you," he responded, glaring fiercely at the balcony and the blank window overhead. "And – and you will return that call, won't you?"
"O yes – of course. We will walk there on Monday, as we come home from the Library. We are able to find our way about in Melbourne very well now, with the help of the map you were so kind as to give us when we first came. I can't tell you how useful that has been."
So, with mutual friendship and goodwill, they parted – Elizabeth to join her sisters upstairs, where one was already setting the tea-kettle to boil on the gas stove, and the other spreading a snow-white cloth on the sitting-room table – Paul Brion to get half-an-hour's work and a hasty dinner before repairing to the reporters' gallery of "the House."
He did not see them again for a long time, and the first news he heard of them was from Mrs. Aarons, whom he chanced to meet when she was shopping one fine morning in Collins Street.
"You see, I remembered my promise," she said, when matters of more personal moment had been disposed of; "I went to see those extraordinary protégées of yours."
"Extraordinary – how extraordinary?" he inquired stiffly.
"Well, I put it to you —are they not extraordinary?"
He was silent for a few seconds, and the points of his moustache went up a little. "Perhaps so – now you mention it," he said. "Perhaps they are unlike the – the usual girl of the period with whom we are familiar. But I hope you were favourably impressed with your visit. Were you?"
"No, I wasn't. I will be frank with you – I wasn't. I never expected to find people living in that manner – and dressing in that manner. It is not what I am used to."
"But they are very lady-like – if I am any judge – and that is the chief thing. Very pretty too. Don't you think so?"
"O dear no! The middle one has rather nice eyes perhaps – though she gives herself great airs, I think, considering her position. And the youngest is not bad looking. Miss King is plain, decidedly. However, I told you I would do something for them, and I have kept my word. They are coming to my next Friday. And I do hope," proceeded Mrs. Aarons, with an anxious face, "that they will dress themselves respectably for the reputation of my house. Do you know anyone who could speak to them about it? Could you give them a hint, do you think?"
"I!– good gracious! I should like to see myself at it," said Paul, grimly. "But I don't think," he added, with a fatuity really pitiable in a man of his years and experience, "that there is any danger of their not looking nice. They must have had their old frocks on when you saw them."
CHAPTER XI.
DISAPPOINTMENT
How they should dress themselves for Mrs. Aarons's Friday was a question as full of interest for our girls as if they had been brought up in the lap of wealth and fashion. They were not so ignorant of the habits and customs of "the world" as not to know that evening dress was required of them on this occasion, and they had not seen so many shop windows and showrooms without learning something of its general features as applied to their sex and to the period. Great were the discussions that went on over the momentous subject. Even their studies at the Public Library lost their interest and importance, it is to be feared, for a day or two, while they were anxiously hesitating, first, whether they should accept the invitation, and, secondly, in what costume they should make their first appearance in polite society. The former of these questions was settled without much trouble. Elizabeth's yearning for "friends," the chance of discovering whom might be missed by missing this unusual opportunity; Patty's thirst for knowledge and experience in all available fields, and Eleanor's habit of peaceably falling in with her sisters' views, overcame the repugnance that all of them entertained to the idea of being patronised by, or beholden for attentions that they could not reciprocate to, Mrs. Aarons, against whom they had conceived a prejudice on the first day of contact with her which a further acquaintance had not tended to lessen. But the latter question was, as I have said, a matter of much debate. Could they afford themselves new frocks? – say, black grenadines that would do for the summer afterwards. This suggestion was inquired into at several shops and of several dressmakers, and then relinquished, but not without a struggle. "We are just recovering ourselves," said Elizabeth, with her note-book before her and her pencil in her hand; "and if we go on as we are doing now we shall be able to save enough to take us to Europe next year without meddling with our house-money. But if we break our rules – well, it will throw us back. And it will be a bad precedent, Patty."
"Then we won't break them," said Patty valiantly. "We will go in our black frocks. Perhaps," she added, with some hesitation, "we can find something amongst our mother's things to trim us up a little."
"She would like to see us making ourselves look pretty with her things," said Eleanor.
"Yes, Nelly. That is what I think. Come along and let us look at that bundle of lace that we put in the bottom drawer of the bureau. Elizabeth, does lace so fine as that go with woollen frocks, do you think? We must not have any incongruities if we can help it."
Elizabeth thought that plain white ruffles would, perhaps, be best, as there was so much danger of incongruities if they trusted to their untrained invention. Whereupon Patty pointed out that they would have to buy ruffles, while the lace would cost nothing, which consideration, added to their secret wish for a little special decoration, now that the occasion for it had arisen – the love of adornment being, though refined and chastened, an ingredient of their nature as of every other woman's – carried the day in favour of "mother's things."
"And I think," said Patty, with dignity, when at last Friday came and they had spread the selected finery on their little beds, "I think that ladies ought to know how to dress themselves better than shop-people can tell them. When they want to make themselves smart, they should think, first, what they can afford and what will be suitable to their position and the occasion, and then they should think what would look pretty in a picture. And they should put on that."
Patty, I think, was well aware that she would look pretty in a picture, when she had arrayed herself for the evening. Round the neck of her black frock she had loosely knotted a length of fine, yellow-white Brussels lace, the value of which, enhanced by several darns that were almost as invisibly woven as the texture itself, neither she nor her sisters had any idea of. Of course it did not "go" with the black frock, even though the latter was not what mourning was expected to be, but its delicacy was wonderfully thrown up by its contrast with that background, and it was a most becoming setting for the wearer's brilliant face. Patty had more of the priceless flounce sewn on her black sleeves (the little Vandal had cut it into lengths on purpose), half of it tucked in at the wrists out of sight; and the ends that hung over her breast were loosely fastened down with a quaint old silver brooch, in which a few little bits of topaz sparkled. Elizabeth was not quite so magnificent. She wore a fichu of black lace over her shoulders – old Spanish, that happened just then to be the desire and despair of women of fashion, who could not get it for love or money; it was big enough to be called a shawl, and in putting it on Patty had to fold and tack it here and there with her needle, to keep it well up in its proper place. This was fastened down at the waist with a shawl-pin shaped like a gold arrow, that her grandmother had used to