“I thought it very ill. I never delivered an unpleasant message in my life before, and did it just for practice. I had much rather have told you the other thing.”
“Your face was very expressive of sorrow when you came to me.”
“I’m glad. I imagined my countenance was too smiling.”
“Never look sad on my account. I have no wish to forfeit your company for a sad mask. Indeed, I counted it a very great kindness your coming to me at all.”
“Truly, Rosalie, you are improving. I think you must be growing older.”
“I’ve forgotten my age. It’s a thing women never remember. Years were a form of imaginative punishment invented by the devil. Some folks are sensitive about them.”
“When you have finished this, will you bring it to my father?”
“Most certainly; who else could I take it to?”
“It’s a word I should never use in connection with him.”
“Well, I will leave you, and may you be prosperous. I don’t know what else I can say, except that you will forgive me for the news I brought.”
So saying, he turned about, and went away again.
One day, when Rosalie had about completed the stone she was engaged upon, the Governor sent for her, by the frog.
“And I think,” said Brightcoat, for Rosalie had changed its name, not liking Croaker, “that it would not be at all a bad plan for us to look and see if there are any new clothes anywhere about. This old dress you are wearing is most worn and shabby.”
“There are none,” said she. “I have looked many a time, and have never found anything except the coarse brown apron I wear to protect my dress from the soil.”
“Well, there’s a time, and not a time, for looking for things. Suppose we look in the little wardrobe together now. If you stay dinner with the Governor, you must be fairly suitably dressed for it.”
And what was Rosalie’s surprise, on looking in the diminutive dress-closet, to find a pretty dress of softest silk, white and apple green, just ready made to fit her figure, and everything besides to match, even to silken stockings and pretty slippers, and a cluster of red and golden leaves upon the dressing-table, as simple and pretty as the rest.
Rosalie, from feeling old as the hills, suddenly felt young as a blue-bell blowing on an early summer morning.