Flaming June | Page 6

off my fur gloves to open it.--It was the year I bought the dining-room carpet. It was just down, I remember, and as we drank the baby's health, the cork flew out of the bottle, and some of the champagne was spilt, and there was a great fuss wiping it up-- Twenty-two years ago! Who would have thought it could be so long?"
"Ah, it always pays to get a good thing while you are about it. It costs a great deal at the start, but you have such satisfaction afterwards. It's not a bit faded!" Mrs Ramsden affirmed, alluding, be it understood, to the Turkey carpet, and not to Miss Cornelia Briskett. "Twenty-two. Just a year younger than my Elma! Elma will be glad to have a companion."
"It is kind of you to say so. Nothing would please me better than to see Cornelia become intimate with your daughter. Poor child, she has not had the advantages of an English upbringing; but we must hope that this visit will be productive of much good. She could not have a better example than Elma. She is a type of a sweet, guileless, English girl."
"Ye-es!" asserted the sweet girl's mother, doubtfully; "but you know, dear Miss Briskett, that at times even Elma..." She shook her head, sighed, and continued with a struggling smile: "We must remember--must we not--that we have been young ourselves, and try not to be too hard on little eccentricities!"
Mrs Ramsden spoke with feeling, for memory, though slumbering, was not dead. She had not always been a well-conducted widow lady, who expressed herself with decorum, and wore black cashmere and bugles. Thirty odd years ago she had been a plump little girl, with a lively capacity for mischief.
On one occasion she had danced two-thirds of the programme at a ball with an officer even more dashing than the objectionable nephew of Mrs Mott, and in a corner of the conservatory had given him a flower from her bouquet. He had kissed the flower before pressing it in his pocket- book, and had looked as if he would have liked to kiss something else into the bargain. ... After twenty-five years of life at Norton, it was astonishing how vividly the prim little widow recalled the guilty thrill of that moment! On yet another occasion she had carried on a clandestine correspondence with the brother of a friend, and had awakened to tardy pangs of conscience only when a more attractive suitor came upon the scene!
Mrs Ramsden blushed at the remembrance, and felt a kindly softening of the heart towards the absent Cornelia but Miss Briskett remained coldly unmoved. She had been an old maid in her cradle, and had gone on steadily growing old maidier ever since. Never had she so forgotten herself as to dally with the affections of any young man, which was perhaps the less to her credit, as no young man had exhibited any inclination to tempt her from the paths of single blessedness.
She looked down her nose at her friend's remark, and replied that she trusted she might be enabled to do her duty, without either prejudice or indulgence, and soon afterwards Mrs Ramsden took her leave, and returned to her own domain.
At one of the windows of the over-furnished sitting-room of The Holt, a girl was standing gazing dreamily through the spotted net curtains, with a weary little droop in the lines of the figure which bespoke fatigue, rather mental, than physical. She was badly dressed, in an ill-cut skirt, and an ill-cut blouse, and masses of light brown hair were twisted heavily together at the back of her head; but the face, which she turned to welcome her mother reminded one instinctively of a bunch of flowers--of white, smooth-leaved narcissi; of fragrant pink roses; of pansies--deep, purple-blue pansies, soft as velvet. Given the right circumstances and accessories, this might have been a beauty, an historical beauty, whose name would be handed down from one generation to another; a Georgina of Devonshire, a beautiful Miss Gunning, a witching Nell Gwynne; but alas! beauty is by no means independent of external aid! The poets who declaim to the contrary are men, poor things, who know no better; every woman in the world will plump for a good dressmaker, when she wishes to appear at her best.
Elma Ramsden, with the makings of a beauty, was just a pretty, dowdy girl, at whom a passer-by would hardly cast a second glance. She looked bored too, and a trifle discontented, and her voice had a flat, uninterested tone.
"Well, mother, back again! Have you enjoyed your call?"
"Thank you, dear, it was hardly a case of enjoyment. I was invited to give my opinion of a matter of importance."
"Yes, I know!--Should she have the sweep this week, or the