Love and Life | Page 4

Harriet (pronounced Hawyot), the next in age, had a small well-set
head, a pretty neck, and fine dark eyes, but the small- pox had made
havoc of her bloom, and left its traces on cheek and brow. The wreck of
her beauty had given her a discontented, fretful expression, which
rendered her far less pleasing than honest, homely Betty, though she

employed all the devices of the toilette to conceal the ravages of the
malady and enhance her remaining advantages of shape and carriage.
There was an air of vexation about her as her father asked, "Well, how
many conquests has my little Aurelia made?" She could not but
recollect how triumphantly she had listened to the same inquiry after
her own first appearance, scarcely three short years ago. Yet she
grudged nothing to Aurelia, her junior by five years, who was for the
first time arrayed as a full-grown belle, in a pale blue, tight- sleeved,
long-waisted silk, open and looped up over a primrose skirt,
embroidered by her own hands with tiny blue butterflies hovering over
harebells. There were blue silk shoes, likewise home-made, with silver
buckles, and the long mittens and deep lace ruffles were of Betty's
fabrication. Even the dress itself had been cut by Harriet from old
wedding hoards of their mother's, and made up after the last mode
imported by Madam Churchill at the Deanery.
The only part of the equipment not of domestic handiwork was the
structure on the head. The Carminster hairdresser had been making his
rounds since daylight, taking his most distinguished customers last; and
as the Misses Delavie were not high on the roll, Harriet and Aurelia had
been under his hands at nine A.M. From that time till three, when the
coach called for them, they had sat captive on low stools under a tent of
table-cloth over tall chair-backs to keep the dust out of the frosted
edifice constructed out of their rich dark hair, of the peculiar tint then
called mouse-colour. Betty had refused to submit to this durance.
"What sort of dinner would be on my father's table-cloth if I were to sit
under one all day?" said she in answer to Harriet's representation of the
fitness of things. "La, my dear, what matters it what an old scarecrow
like me puts on?"
Old maidenhood set in much earlier in those days than at present; the
sisters acquiesced, and Betty had run about as usual all the morning in
her mob-cap, and chintz gown tucked through her pocket-holes, and
only at the last submitted her head to the manipulations of Corporal
Palmer, who daily powdered his master's wig.
Strange and unnatural as was the whitening of the hair, it was effective
in enhancing the beauty of Aurelia's dark arched brows, the soft
brilliance of her large velvety brown eyes, and the exquisite carnation
and white of her colouring. Her features were delicately chiselled, and

her face had that peculiar fresh, innocent, soft, untouched bloom and
undisturbed repose which form the special charm and glory of the first
dawn of womanhood. Her little head was well poised on a slender neck,
just now curving a little to one side with the fatigue of the hours during
which it had sustained her headgear. This consisted of a tiny flat hat,
fastened on by long pins, and adorned by a cluster of campanulas like
those on her dress, with a similar blue butterfly on an invisible wire
above them, the dainty handiwork of Harriet.
The inquiry about conquests was a matter of course after a young lady's
first party, but Aurelia looked too childish for it, and Betty made haste
to reply.
"Aurelia was a very good girl. No one could have curtsied or bridled
more prettily when we paid our respects to my Lady Herries and Mrs.
Churchill, and the Dean highly commended her dancing."
"You danced? Fine doings! I thought you were merely invited to look
on at the game at bowls. Who had the best of the match?"
"The first game was won by Canon Boltby, the second by the Dean,"
said Betty; "but when they would have played the conqueror, Lady
Herries interfered and said the gentlemen had kept the field long
enough, and now it was our turn. So a cow was driven on the bowling-
green, with a bell round her neck and pink ribbons on her horns."
"A cow! What will they have next?"
"They say 'tis all the mode in London," interposed Harriet.
"Pray was the cow to instruct you in dancing?" continued the Major.
"No, sir," said Aurelia, whom he had addressed; "she was to be milked
into the bowl of syllabub."
This was received with a great "Ho! ho!" and a demand who was to act
as milker.
"That was the