Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction; Cousins -- Juvenile fiction
"Just a little. I recollect things she used to wear, and where she used
to sit, and one or two things she said. But perhaps I don't recollect
them, but think I do because Aunt Myra told them to me."
"Is there no picture of her?"
"Only a tin-type, and it isn't very good. It's almost faded out; you
can hardly see the face."
"What a pity!"
"Le dîner est servi, Madame," said the voice of Frederic at the door.
"We won't wait for the girls. They will be down in a moment," said Mrs.
Gray, as she led the way to the dining-room. The sound of their feet on
the staircase was heard as she spoke; and down they ran, the elder two
in pretty dresses of thin white woollen stuff, which Candace in her
unworldliness thought fine enough for a party.
People in North Tolland did not dine in the modern sense of the word.
They took in supplies of food at stated intervals, very much as a
locomotive stops for wood and water when it cannot go on any longer
without such replenishment; but it was a matter of business and
necessity to do so rather than of pleasure.
Candace, who had sat down opposite Aunt Myra every day as long as she
could remember at the small pine table in the yellow-painted kitchen,
with always the same thick iron-stone ware plates and cups, the same
little black tray to hold the tea-things, the same good, substantial,
prosaic fare, served without the least attempt at grace or decoration,
had never dreamed of such a dinner as was usual at the Grays'. She said
not a word to express her astonishment; but she glanced at the thick
cluster of maiden-hair ferns which quivered in the middle of the table
from an oval stand of repoussé brass, at the slender glasses of
tea-roses which stood on either side, at the Sèvres dishes of fruit,
sweet biscuits, and dried ginger, and wondered if this were to be all
the dinner. Did fashionable people never eat anything more substantial
than grapes and crackers? She felt very hungry, and yet it seemed coarse
not to be satisfied when everything was so pretty.
"Consommé, Mademoiselle?" murmured Frederic in her ear, as he placed
before her a plate full of some clear liquid which smelt deliciously,
and offered a small dish of grated cheese for her acceptance.
"Oh, thank you, sir," said Candace, wondering confusedly if cheese in
soup was the correct thing.
Mrs. Gray's quick ear caught the "sir." She did not even turn her head,
but she mentally added another to the hints which must be administered
to Candace as soon as she was sufficiently at home to bear them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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