The Old Wives Tale | Page 7

no right to possess new
clothes. Even her desire to take the air of a Thursday afternoon seemed
to them unnatural and somewhat reprehensible. Why should she want
to stir out of her kitchen? As for her tender yearnings, they positively
grudged these to Maggie. That Maggie should give rein to chaste
passion was more than grotesque; it was offensive and wicked. But let
it not for an instant be doubted that they were nice, kind-hearted, well-
behaved, and delightful girls! Because they were. They were not
angels.

"It's too ridiculous!" said Sophia, severely. She had youth, beauty, and
rank in her favour. And to her it really was ridiculous.
"Poor old Maggie!" Constance murmured. Constance was foolishly
good-natured, a perfect manufactory of excuses for other people; and
her benevolence was eternally rising up and overpowering her reason.
"What time did mother say she should be back?" Sophia asked.
"Not until supper."
"Oh! Hallelujah!" Sophia burst out, clasping her hands in joy. And they
both slid down from the counter just as if they had been little boys, and
not, as their mother called them, "great girls."
"Let's go and play the Osborne quadrilles," Sophia suggested (the
Osborne quadrilles being a series of dances arranged to be performed
on drawing-room pianos by four jewelled hands).
"I couldn't think of it," said Constance, with a precocious gesture of
seriousness. In that gesture, and in her tone, was something which
conveyed to Sophia: "Sophia, how can you be so utterly blind to the
gravity of our fleeting existence as to ask me to go and strum the piano
with you?" Yet a moment before she had been a little boy.
"Why not?" Sophia demanded.
"I shall never have another chance like to-day for getting on with this,"
said Constance, picking up a bag from the counter.
She sat down and took from the bag a piece of loosely woven canvas,
on which she was embroidering a bunch of roses in coloured wools.
The canvas had once been stretched on a frame, but now, as the delicate
labour of the petals and leaves was done, and nothing remained to do
but the monotonous background, Constance was content to pin the stuff
to her knee. With the long needle and several skeins of mustard-tinted
wool, she bent over the canvas and resumed the filling-in of the tiny
squares. The whole design was in squares--the gradations of red and

greens, the curves of the smallest buds--all was contrived in squares,
with a result that mimicked a fragment of uncompromising Axminster
carpet. Still, the fine texture of the wool, the regular and rapid grace of
those fingers moving incessantly at back and front of the canvas, the
gentle sound of the wool as it passed through the holes, and the intent,
youthful earnestness of that lowered gaze, excused and invested with
charm an activity which, on artistic grounds, could not possibly be
justified. The canvas was destined to adorn a gilt firescreen in the
drawing-room, and also to form a birthday gift to Mrs. Baines from her
elder daughter. But whether the enterprise was as secret from Mrs.
Baines as Constance hoped, none save Mrs Baines knew.
"Con," murmured Sophia, "you're too sickening sometimes."
"Well," said Constance, blandly, "it's no use pretending that this hasn't
got to be finished before we go back to school, because it has." Sophia
wandered about, a prey ripe for the Evil One. "Oh," she exclaimed
joyously--even ecstatically--looking behind the cheval glass, "here's
mother's new skirt! Miss Dunn's been putting the gimp on it! Oh,
mother, what a proud thing you will be!" Constance heard swishings
behind the glass. "What are you doing, Sophia?"
"Nothing."
"You surely aren't putting that skirt on?"
"Why not?"
"You'll catch it finely, I can tell you!"
Without further defence, Sophia sprang out from behind the immense
glass. She had already shed a notable part of her own costume, and the
flush of mischief was in her face. She ran across to the other side of the
room and examined carefully a large coloured print that was affixed to
the wall.
This print represented fifteen sisters, all of the same height and
slimness of figure, all of the same age--about twenty-five or so, and all

with exactly the same haughty and bored beauty. That they were in
truth sisters was clear from the facial resemblance between them; their
demeanour indicated that they were princesses, offspring of some
impossibly prolific king and queen. Those hands had never toiled, nor
had those features ever relaxed from the smile of courts. The princesses
moved in a landscape of marble steps and verandahs, with a bandstand
and strange trees in the distance. One was in a riding-habit, another in
evening attire, another dressed for tea, another for the theatre; another
seemed to be