Rotha bit her lips and succeeded in biting down the answer. "We have not grown very graceful _yet_," Antoinette went on. "It is usually thought civilized to answer people." "You had better take off your things," Mrs. Busby said. "You may lay them up stairs in your room." "Is there any reason which makes this an inconvenient day for me to be here?" Rotha asked before moving to obey this command. "It makes no difference. The proper time for putting such a question, if you want to do things _gracefully_, is before taking your action, while the answer can also be given gracefully, if unfavourable." Rotha went slowly up stairs, feeling that or any other place in the house better than the room where her aunt was. She went to her little cold, cheerless, desolate-looking, old room. How she had suffered there! how thankful she was to be in it no more! how changed were her circumstances! Could she not be good and keep the peace, this one day? She had purposed to be very good, and calm, like Mr. Digby; and now already she felt as if a bunch of nettles had been drawn all over her. What an unmanageable thing was this temper of hers. She went down stairs slowly and lingeringly. The two looked at her again as she entered the room; now that her cloak was off, the new dress came into view. "Where did you get that dress, Rotha?" was her aunt's question. "Mrs. Mowbray got it for me." "Does she propose to send me the bill by and by?" "Of course not! Aunt Serena, Mrs. Mowbray never does mean things." "H'm! What induced her then to go to such expense for a girl she never saw before?" "I suppose she was sorry for me," said Rotha, with her heart swelling. "Sorry for you! May I ask, why?" "You know how I was dressed, aunt Serena; and you know how the other girls in school dress." "I know a great many of them have foolish mothers, who make themselves ridiculous by the way they let their children appear. It is a training of vanity. I should not have thought Mrs. Mowbray would lend herself to such nonsense." "But you do not think Antoinette has a foolish mother?" Rotha could not help saying. Mrs. Busby's daughter was quite as much dressed as the other girls. That she ought not to have made that speech, Rotha knew; but she made it. So much satisfaction she must have. It remained however completely ignored. "Who made your dress?" Mrs. Busby went on. "A dress-maker. One of the ladies went with me to have it cut." "What did you do Christmas?" Antoinette inquired. In reply to which, Rotha gave an account of her visit to the Old Coloured Home. "Just like Mrs. Mowbray!" was Mrs. Busby's comment. "She has no discretion." "Why do you say that, aunt Serena?" "Such an expenditure of money for nothing. What good would a little tea and a little tobacco do those people? It would not last more than a week or two; and then they are just where they were before." "But it did not cost so very much," objected Rotha.