Rosamond was feeling pretty proud by the time Madam Mucklegrand came down stairs.
"We have engaged the young woman: the doctor quite approves; she will return without delay, I hope?"
As if Rosamond were somehow responsible all through.
"I have no doubt she will; good morning, madam."
"Good morning. I am, really, very much obliged. You have been of great service."
Rosamond turned quietly round upon the threshold.
"That was what I was very anxious to be," she said, in her perfectly sweet and musical voice,--"to the poor woman."
Italics would indicate too coarsely the impalpable emphasis she put upon the last two words. But Mrs. Mucklegrand caught it.
Rosamond went away quite as sure of her own self-respect as ever, but very considerably cured of Spreadsplendidism.
This was but one phase of it, she knew; there are real folks, also, in Spreadsplendid Park; they are a good deal covered up, there, to be sure; but they can't help that. It is what always happens to somebody when Pyramids are built. Madam Mucklegrand herself was, perhaps, only a good deal covered up.
How lovely it was to go down into Orchard Street after that, and take tea with Miss Craydocke! How human and true it seemed,--the friendliness that shone and breathed there, among them all. How kingdom-of-heaven-like the air was, and into what pleasantness of speech it was born!
And then Hazel Ripwinkley came over, like a little spirit from another blessed society, to tell that "the picture-book things were all ready, and that it would take everybody to help."
That was Rosamond's first glimpse of Witch Hazel, who found her out instantly,--the real, Holabirdy part of her,--and set her down at once among her "folks."
It was bright and cheery in Mrs. Ripwinkley's parlor; you could hardly tell whence the cheeriness radiated, either.
The bright German lamp was cheery, in the middle of the round table; the table was cheery, covered with glossy linen cut into large, square book-sheets laid in piles, and with gay pictures of all kinds, brightly colored; and the scissors,--or scissorses,--there were ever so many shining pairs of them,--and the little mucilage bottles, and the very scrap-baskets,--all looked cozy and comfortable, and as if people were going to have a real good time among them, somehow.