“Thank you, yes. Then I shall see Arbell the day after to-morrow?”
“Undoubtedly, if she will come. At what hour? They dine at two.”
“Yes, do; and I will send for her at half-past one, because it is nearly half-an-hour’s walk. Good-by, good-by! I must make peace as I can with Mademoiselle.”
Arbell has been, and gone. She came in rather before eleven, carrying her little white lap-dog, who had a new scarlet ribbon round his neck. I saw directly that the cloud was gone,—she looked as fresh as a rose, and as cheerful as a lark.
“Good girl, for being so punctual,” said I.
“Punctual!” said she. “Why, I hope I’m more than that, or Shock and I have raced in vain! I would not let old John come with me more than half way, and then we took to our heels and ran—didn’t we, Shock?”
“I feel the compliment,” said I, very sincerely. “Perhaps, though, you would as soon have run in any other direction.”
“No, I shouldn’t,” said she, with a bright look, as she untied the blue strings of her large straw hat, and threw it on the ground. The next minute she picked it up, and put it, with her gloves and visite, on a side-table.
“Why did you do that?” said I, curiously.
“Because you are not Mademoiselle. She says I never can be tidy, but you see I can.”
“What people can be, they ought to be,” said I.
“What people can be at some times they can’t be at others,” said Arbell. “Is it not so, Mrs. Cheerlove?”
“By-the-by, why do they abbreviate your name into Arbell?”
“Because an ugly name is good enough for an ugly girl,” said Arbell, quickly; and then, with a little self-reproach for so captious a speech, “No, the real reason is, because it is the abbreviation by which the celebrated Lady Arabella Stuart was called by her grandmother, the old Countess of Shrewsbury. Mamma read about her in Miss Strickland’s “Queens,” I believe, and so took a fancy to call me Arbell.”
“I am very glad to hear you say so, my love. Are you hungry?”
She looked at me artlessly, and said, “I should like a slice of bread-and-butter.”
“No, bread-and-butter. I should only have dry bread in the school-room—and scarcely that, because Mademoiselle says we ought not to be hungry before an early dinner.”
“But you have had a walk,” said I, ringing the bell; “and persons who have left off growing sometimes forget how hungry they were when they were not full-grown.”