"How well you understand me!" she said. "No one else would have understood me so well. I never can deceive you, at least. Yes, you are quite right. I am going to enjoy the thing dramatically. I don't want to go, but as I feel it discreet I intend to amuse myself, and make the best of it. I am going to play at being maternal and amiable, and even domesticated. I have a costume for it, as I have one for bathing and dining and making calls. This," she said, touching her dress, "is part of it. Upstairs I have a little mob-cap and an apron, and a work-basket to carry on my arm. They are not unbecoming, either. Shall I run up into the nursery and put them on, and show them to you? Then you can be sure that I comprehend the part." "Have you a mob-cap and an apron?" asked Richard. "Have you, really?" "Yes, really," she answered. "Don't you remember that I told you that it was my dresses that were of consequence, and not myself? Shall I go and put them on?" Her tone was soft no longer; it was a little hard, and so was the look which half hid itself behind the brightness of the eyes she turned toward him. "Yes," he answered. "Put them on, and let us see them." She turned round and went out of the room, and Arbuthnot followed her with a rather anxious glance. The professor stirred his tea as usual, and Tredennis turned his attention to Janey, while Richard laughed. "I have no doubt she has all three," he said. "And they will be well worth seeing." They were worth seeing. In a few minutes she returned,--the little work-basket on her arm, the mob-cap upon her head, the apron around her waist, and a plain square of white muslin crossed upon her bosom. She stopped in the door-way, and made a courtesy. "There ought to be a curtain, and somebody ought to ring it up," she said. "Enter the domestic virtues." And she came and stood before them, her eyes shining still, and her head erect, but--perhaps through the rather severe black and white of her costume--seeming to have a shade less color than before. "I did not make them for this occasion," she said. "They have appeared before. You don't remember them, Richard, but I had them when Jack was a baby--and a novelty. I tried being maternal then." "Why, yes," said Richard, "to be sure I remember them,--and very becoming they were, too." "Oh, yes," she answered. "I knew they were becoming!" She turned and fronted Tredennis. "I hope they are becoming now," she said, and made her little courtesy again. "They are very becoming," he answered, looking at her steadily. "I like them better than--the silks and brocades." "Thank you," she said. "I thought you would--or I would not have put them on. Jack and Janey, come and stand on each side of me while I sit down. I have always congratulated myself that you were becoming. This is what we shall be constrained to do when we are in Virginia, only we shall not have the incentive of being looked at."