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Page 14
"'Well,' said I, 'she didn't seem to think a great deal about him. She
says all the young men at the French legation seem more than usually
foolish, but Comte Ernest is the worst of the lot. He really _does_ look
like an absolute fool, you know,' I added pleasantly. Now, girls, what was
there in that to make her angry? Can you tell? She grew scarlet, and
glared as if she wanted to bite my head off; and then she turned her back
and would scarcely speak to me again. Does she always behave that way when
the aristocracy is lightly spoken of?"
"Oh, Rose,--oh, Rose," cried Clover, in fits of laughter, "did you really
tell her that?"
"I really did. Why shouldn't I? Is there any reason in particular?"
"Only that she is engaged to him," replied Katy, in an extinguished voice.
"Good gracious! No wonder she scowled! This is really dreadful. But then
why did she look so black when she asked where we were going, and I said
to your wedding? That didn't seem to please her any more than my little
remarks about the nobility."
"I don't pretend to understand Lilly," said Katy, temperately; "she is an
odd girl."
"I suppose an odd girl can't be expected to have an even temper,"
remarked Rose, apparently speaking with a hairpin in her mouth. "Well,
I've done for myself, that is evident. I need never expect any notice in
future from the Comtesse de Conflans."
Cousin Helen heard no more, but presently steps sounded outside her door,
and Katy looked in to ask if she were dressed, and if she might bring Rose
in, a request which was gladly granted. It was a pretty sight to see Rose
with Cousin Helen. She knew all about her already from Clover and Katy,
and fell at once under the gentle spell which seemed always to surround
that invalid sofa, begged leave to say "Cousin Helen" as the others did,
and was altogether at her best and sweetest when with her, full of
merriment, but full too of a deference and sympathy which made her
particularly charming.
"I never did see anything so lovely in all my life before," she told
Clover in confidence. "To watch her lying there looking so radiant and so
peaceful and so interested in Katy's affairs, and never once seeming to
remember that except for that accident she too would have been a bride
and had a wedding! It's perfectly wonderful! Do you suppose she is never
sorry for herself? She seems the merriest of us all."
"I don't think she remembers herself often enough to be sorry. She is
always thinking of some one else, it seems to me."
"Well, I am glad to have seen her," added Rose, in a more serious tone
than was usual to her. "She and grandmamma are of a different order of
beings from the rest of the world. I don't wonder you and Katy always were
so good; you ought to be with such a Cousin Helen."
"I don't think we were as good as you make us out, but Cousin Helen has
really been one of the strong influences of our lives. She was the making
of Katy, when she had that long illness; and Katy has made the rest of
us."
Little Rose from the first moment became the delight of the household, and
especially of Amy Ashe, who could not do enough for her, and took her off
her mother's hands so entirely that Rose complained that she seemed to
have lost her child as well as her husband. She was a sedate little
maiden, and wonderfully wise for her years. Already, in some ways she
seemed older than her erratic little mother, of whom, in a droll fashion,
she assumed a sort of charge. She was a born housewife.
"Mamma, you have fordotten your wings," Clover would hear her saying.
"Mamma, you has a wip in your seeve, you must mend it," or "Mamma, don't
fordet dat your teys is in the top dwawer,"--all these reminders and
advices being made particularly comical by the baby pronunciation. Rose's
theory was that little Rose was a messenger from heaven sent to buffet her
and correct her mistakes.
"The bane and the antidote," she would say. "Think of my having a child
with powers of ratiocination!"
Rose came down the night of her arrival after a long, freshening nap,
looking rested and bonny in a pretty blue dress, and saying that as
little Rose too had taken a good sleep, she might sit up to tea if the
family liked. The family were only too pleased to have her do so. After
tea Rose carried her off, ostensibly to go to bed, but Clover heard a
great deal of confabulating and giggling in the hall and on the stairs,
and soon after, Rose returned, the door-bell rang loudly, and there
entered an astonishing vision,--little Rose, costumed as a Cupid or a
carrier-pigeon, no one knew exactly which, with a pair of large white
wings fastened on her shoulders, and dragging behind her by a loop of
ribbon a sizeable basket quite full of parcels.
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