‘It was so good of you to put your arms round my neck. Not just a regulation kiss, as Frank says. I put myself on the very same square this time to see what you would do.’ ‘Why you are a child still!’ said Mary, looking at her with that curious mixture of amusement and wonder and respect with which an unmarried woman looks upon the matron who is younger than herself. How many experiences Alice had gone through of which the home-dwelling girl knew nothing! And yet she was a child still! ‘So mamma says,’ said Alice. ‘But, oh! how nice and fresh and bright you look! Is that how dresses are made now? Am I a dreadful fright in my old things? For money does not go so far in India as one thinks; and what with the children and everything, I have had to be very economical. Mamma says I am about fifty years behind other people; and they all laugh so at poor baby’s things. But he has got on his new pelisse to-day, and I think he looks very nice. Is grandmamma up yet? Do you think she would like the children to go and see her in her room?’ ‘I must let her know first,’ said Mary. But she lingered, and this babble ran on, which was so pleasant; and the children’s hats were taken off, and Alice exhibited little Mary’s hair, which was pale gold, of the softest, silkiest kind; but would not _crêper_, nor stand out, as ‘the fashion’ was, to her despair. ‘You would not think she had half so much as she has,’ the mother said; ‘it is so soft. Look here, how thick it is! but it will not hang as it ought. Should I take her to Truefitt, or somebody? Frank thinks it is pretty as it is, but then he did not know what was the fashion; and he is silly,--he likes curls.’ ‘And, by-the-bye, where are your curls?’ said Mary. Alice laughed and shook her head with the pretty movement that these same curls had made habitual to her. ‘I put them up to come out,’ she said. ‘Fancy coming out with the children, and without Frank, with those things bobbing about my shoulders like a baby! I wish you would speak to him about it, Mary. Mamma agrees with me that I ought to put them up when I go out; but he is such an old goose. Don’t you think we ought to go to grandmamma? She may think that it is unnatural of us not to go to her at once.’ ‘It will do by-and-by,’ said Mary. ‘You know what an invalid she is. How good the children are, Alice! I am sure she will be delighted with them, after all.’ ‘After all?’ cried Alice, amazed. ‘But you must not think they are always good; you should see mamma with them. Mamma looks as if it was natural to her to have a baby in her arms. Wasn’t it good of Frank to make up the plan for me to come over and save her all the anxiety? I did not want to come till he was ready myself. It was all his consideration. And then Lady Sinclair wanted me so much to travel with her. Of course it was more comfortable. And as I am not a great lady myself, nor anybody particular, it was nice to have Lady Sinclair to take me up, you know, for Frank’s sake.’