"'Did she know what time these young ladies were to arrive?'

"'Miss Lucy knew that the carriage had gone to meet them, ma'am.'

"'Very thoughtless! Very thoughtless indeed!' said the lady. Thompson paused respectfully, as if to receive the full weight of the remark, and then vanished noiselessly as before.

"There was an awkward pause. Our hostess left off scratching, and looked very cross; the Irishman fired one of his pellets across the room, and left off chatting, and the red-haired young lady got up, and rustled across to us. I remember her so well, Ida, for we fell deeply in love with her and her kindness. I remember her green and white dress. She had a fair round face, more pleasant than really pretty, a white starlike forehead, almost too firm a mouth, but a very gentle voice, at least, so we thought, when she said:

"'As Lucy is out, may I take these young ladies to their room?'

"Our hostess hesitated, and murmured something about Bedford, who was the lady's maid. The starlike forehead contracted, and the red-haired young lady said, rather emphatically:

"'As Lucy is not in to receive her friends, I thought I might perhaps supply her place.'

"'Well, my dear Kate, if you will be so kind,' said our hostess, 'I must finish these letters.'

"'The yellow room?' said the young lady, abruptly, and swept us off without further parley. The Irish gentleman opened the door for us, staring with a half-puzzled, half-amused look at the lofty air with which the young lady pa.s.sed out. He followed us into the hall, where we left him discharging his remaining pellets at the furniture, and whistling 'Kathleen Mavourneen,' as clearly as a bird.

"The yellow room was a large airy one, with white painted wainscoting, a huge four-post bed with yellow curtains, and a pretty view from the windows. In the middle of the floor we saw our box standing in all its dignity, uncorded, and ready. Then it was the terrible fact broke upon our minds that the key was left behind. My sufferings during the few seconds before I found courage to confide this misfortune to our new friend were considerable. When I did tell her, the calmness and good nature with which she received the confession were both surprising and delightful.

"'The lock doesn't look a very uncommon one, she said, as she opened the door. 'I dare say I may find a key to fit it.'

"'What's the matter?' said a voice outside. It was the Irish gentleman. She explained.

"'Keys?' said the Irish gentleman; 'got lots in my pocket, besides their being totally unnecessary, as I'm a capital hand at lock-picking. Let me see.'

"With which he slipped in, seeming quite as much at his ease as in the drawing-room, and in another second had squatted upon the floor before our box, where he seemed to be quite as comfortable as in the arm-chair he had left. Here he poked, and fitted, and whistled, and chatted without a pause.

"'I've locks and keys to everything I possess' he cheerfully remarked; 'and as I never lock up anything, there's no damage done if the keys are left behind, which is a good thing, you see, as I always leave everything everywhere.'

"'Do you make a principle of it?' asked the young lady, coldly.

"'I'm afraid I make a practice of it.' He had opened the box, and was leaning against the bed-post, with a roguish twinkle in his brown eyes, which faded, however, under the silent severity of the red-haired young lady, and gave place to a look of melancholy that might have melted granite, as he added:

"'I'm all alone, you see, that's what does it. I believe I'm the neatest creature breathing, if I'd only somebody to keep me up to it.'

"Neither his hardened untidiness nor his lonely lot seemed, however, to weigh heavily on his mind; for he withdrew whistling, and his notes were heard about the pa.s.sages for some little time. When they had died away in a distant part of the house, the red-haired young lady left us also.

"I shall not give you a lengthened account of our unpacking, dear Ida; though it was as enjoyable, but less protracted than the packing-up had been. How we revelled in the s.p.a.cious drawers and cupboards, over which we were queens, and how strictly we followed one of our mother's wise counsels--'unpack to the bottom of your box at once, however short your visit may be; it saves time in the end.' We did unpack to the lowest book (an artificial system of memory, which I had long been purposing to study, which I thought to find spare moments to get up here, and which, I may as well confess, I did not look at during the visit, and have not learnt to this day). We divided shelves and pegs with all fairness, and as a final triumph found a use for the elaborate watch-pockets that hung above our pillows. They were rich with an unlimited expenditure of quilled ribbon, and must have given a great deal of trouble to someone who had not very many serious occupations in this life. Fatima and I wished that we had watches to put in them, till the happy thought suddenly struck one of us, that we could keep in them our respective papers of good habits.

"Bedford came in whilst we were in the midst of our labours, and warmly begged us to leave everything to her, as she would put our things away for us. The red-haired young lady had sent her, and she became a mainstay of practical comfort to us during our visit. She seemed a haven of humanity after the conventions of the drawing-room.

From her we got incidental meals when we were hungry, spirits of wine when Fatima's tooth ached, warnings when we were near to being late for breakfast, little modern and fashionable turns to our hair and clothes, and familiar anecdotes of this household and of others in which she had lived. I remember her with grat.i.tude.

"Miss Lucy came home before our putting away was fairly finished, and we had tea with her in the schoolroom. She was a slight, sharp, lively young lady, looking older than fifteen to us, rather pretty, and very self-possessed. She scanned us from head to foot when we first met, and I felt as if her eyes had found defects innumerable, which seemed the less likely, as she also was shortsighted. As her governess was away visiting a sick relative, Miss Lucy did the honours of the schoolroom. She was cold and inattentive at first, became patronizing at tea, and ended by being gracious. In her gracious mood she was both affectionate and confidential. She called us 'my dear girls,' put her arms round us as we sat in the dark, and chattered without a pause about herself, her governesses, her sister, and her sister's husband.

"'A wedding in the house,' she observed, 'is very good fun, particularly if you take a princ.i.p.al part in it. I was chief bride's-maid, you know, my dear girls. But I'll tell you the whole affair from the first. You know I had never been bride's-maid before, and I couldn't make up my mind about how I should like the dresses,'

etc., etc. And we had got no further in the story than Miss Lucy's own costume, when we were called to dress and go downstairs.

"'What are you going to put on?' she asked, balancing herself at our door and peering in.

"'White muslin!' we said with some pride, for they were new frocks, and splendid in our eyes.

"'I have had so many muslins, I am tired of them,' she said; 'I shall wear a pink silk to-night. The tr.i.m.m.i.n.g came from London. Perhaps I may wear a muslin to-morrow; I have an Indian one. But you shall see my dresses to-morrow, my dear girls.'

"With which she left us, and we put on our new frocks (which were to be _the_ evening dresses of our visit) in depressed spirits. This was owing to the thought of the pink silk, and of the possibility of a surfeit of white muslin.

"During the evening we learnt another of Miss Lucy's peculiarities.

Affectionate as she had been when we were alone together, she was no sooner among the grown-up young ladies downstairs than she kept with them as much as she was permitted, and seemed to forget us altogether.

Perhaps a fit of particularly short sight attacked her; for she seemed to look over us, away from us, on each side of us, anywhere but at us, and to be quite unconscious of our existence. The red-haired young lady had made her fetch us a large sc.r.a.p-book, and we sat with this before our eyes, and the soft monotonous chit-chat of our hostess in our ears, as she talked and worked with some elder ladies on the sofa.

It seemed a long gossip, with no particular end or beginning, in which tatting, tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, military distinction, linens, servants, honourable conduct, sentiment, settlements, expectations, and Bath waters, were finely blended. From the constant mention of Cecilia and the dear major, it was evident that the late wedding was the subject of discourse; indeed, for that matter, it remained the prime topic of conversation during our stay.

"Cecilia and the dear major were at Bath, and their letters were read aloud at the breakfast-table. I remember wondering at the deep interest that all the ladies seemed to take in the bride's pretty flow of words about the fashions, the drives, and the pump-room, and the long lists of visitors' names; this, too, without any connection between the hearers and the people and places mentioned. When anybody did recognize a name, however, about which she knew anything, it seemed like the finding of a treasure. All the ladies bore down upon it at once, dug up the family history to its farthest known point, and divided the subject among them. Miss Lucy followed these letters closely, and remembered them wonderfully, though (as I afterwards found) she had never seen Bath, and knew no more of the people mentioned than the little hearsay facts she had gathered from former letters.

"It is a very useful art, my dear Ida, and one in which I have sadly failed all my life, to be able to remember who is related to whom, what watering-place such a family went to the summer before last, and which common friends they met there, etc. But, like other arts, it demands close attention, forbids day-dreaming, and takes up a good deal of time.

"'_Wasn't_ it odd,' said Miss Lucy, one morning after breakfast, 'that Cecilia and the major should meet those Hicksons!'

"'Who are the Hicksons?' I asked.

"'Oh! my dear girl, don't you remember, in Cecilia's last letter, her telling us about the lady she met in that shop when they were in town, buying a shawl the counterpart of her own? and it seems so odd they should turn up in Bath, and be such nice people! Don't you remember mamma said it must be the same family as that Colonel Hickson who was engaged to a girl with one eye, and she caught the small-pox and got so much marked, and he broke it off?'

"'Small-pox and one eye would look very ugly,' Fatima languidly observed; and this subject drifted after the rest.

"One afternoon, I remember, it chanced that we were left alone with our hostess in the drawing-room. No one else happened to be in the way to talk to, and the good lady talked to us. We were clever girls for our age, I fancy, and we had been used to talk a good deal with our mother; at any rate we were attentive listeners, and I do not think our hostess required much more of us. I think she was glad of anybody who had not heard the whole affair from beginning to end, and so she put up her feet on the sofa, and started afresh with the complete history of her dear Cecilia from the cradle; and had gone on to the major, his military exploits abroad, his genteel connections at home, and the tendency to gout in the family which troubled him at times, and was a sad anxiety to her dear child, when visitors were announced.

"Our intelligent attention had gained favour for us; and we were introduced to these ladies as 'daughters of a very dear friend of mine, whom I have not seen for years,' on which one lady gave a sweet glance and a tight smile and murmured:

"'So pleasant to renew acquaintance in the children;' and the other ladies gave sweet glances, and tight smiles also, and echoed:

"'So pleasant!'

"'Such sensible girls!' said our hostess, as if we were not there; 'like women of fifty. So like their dear mother! Such treasures to my little Lucy! You know she has lost her dear sister,' etc., etc.

"For then the ladies drew together, and our hostess having got a fresh audience, we retired to distant arm-chairs, a good deal bewildered.

"But to return to our first evening.

"Miss Lucy and we retired together, and no sooner had the drawing-room door closed behind us, than she wound her arms round our waists, and became as devoted as if we had been side by side the whole evening.

"'I'll tell you what I'll do, my dear girls,' she said when we reached our room; 'I'll come and sleep with you (there's lots of room for three), and then I can go on about Cecilia's affair, and if we don't finish to-night we can go on to-morrow morning before we get up.

I always wake early, so I can call you. I'll come back when I'm ready for bed.'

"And she vanished.

"We were in bed when she returned. Her hair had been undergoing some wonderful process, and was now stowed away under a large and elaborate night-cap.

"'Bedford was so slow,' said she; 'and then, you know, I got into bed, and let her tidy the room, and then when she was fairly gone, out I got, and here I am. We shall be as comfortable as possible; I'll be in the middle, and then I can have you on each side of me, my dear girls;' and in she sprang.

"'Did you notice this?' she asked, holding up her hand, and pointing out the edging on the sleeve of her night-dress; 'it's a new pattern; do you know it? Oh! my dears, the yards and yards of tatting that Cecilia had for her trousseau!'