Mrs. Maude has two charming daughters, quaint, old-fashioned little creatures, and some years their junior is a small brother.
The two girls were once invited to a fancy dress ball in Harley Street: it happened to be a Saturday, and therefore _matinée_ day. Their mother arranged their dresses. The elder was to wear the costume of Lady Teazle, an exact replica of the one reproduced in this volume, and which Mrs. Maude wore when playing that part, while the younger was to be dressed as a Dutch bride, also a copy of one of Miss Emery’s dresses in the _Black Tulip_. They all lunched together, and as the mother was going off to the theatre, she told the nurse to see that the children were dressed properly, and take them to the house at a certain hour.
“Oh, but, mummy, we can’t go unless you dress us,” exclaimed the elder child; “we should never be right.” And therefore it was settled that the two little people should be arrayed with the exception of the final touches, and then driven round by way of the Haymarket Theatre, so that their mother might attend to their wigs, earrings, hat or cap, as the case might be.
What a pretty idea. The mother, who was attracting rounds of applause from a crowded house every time she went on the stage, running back to her dressing-room between the scenes, to drop down on her knees and attend to her little girls, so that they should be all right for their party.
Admiring the costume of the younger one, I said:
“Why, you have got on your mother’s dress.”
“No, it’s not mother’s,” she replied. “It’s _my_ dress, and _my_ shoes, and _my_ stockings—all my very own; but it’s mother’s gold cap, and mother’s earrings, and mother’s necklace, and mother’s apron—with a tuck in,” and she nodded her wise little head.
This was a simple child, not like the small American girl whose mother was relating wonderful stories of her precocity to an admiring friend, when a shrill voice from the corner called out:
“But you haven’t told the last clever thing I said, mamma,” evidently wishing none of her brilliant wit to be lost.
They looked sweet, those two children of Mrs. Maude’s, and the way the elder one attended upon her smaller sister was pretty to see.
In a charming little house near the Brompton Oratory Mrs. Maude lived for years, surrounded by her family, perfectly content in their society. She is in every sense a thoroughly domesticated woman, and warmly declares she “loves housekeeping.”