"Decent! why, it's the very pink of the latest fashion: the only wear, in fact, though I _think_ I would rather be without the skirt on a windy day. _Then_ there'd be an uplifting of hands and a searching of hearts, if you like." Mrs. Garside only looked half-satisfied. "Yo'r th' same, an' yet not th' same," she said. "Not the same! Hannah, why I should hope not indeed, or my good uncle's money would be sadly wasted, and you know that wilful waste makes woeful want. I know or should know, for Aunt Tinker dins it in my ear every time I buy a new ribbon or a pair of gloves. The same, indeed! Why do you know, Hannah, I'm being _finished_," and Dorothy dropped her voice as though she spoke a word of doom. "Finished?" queried Lucy, "finished?" "Aye finished, in very sooth. Fashioned, moulded, formed taught carriage and deportment, and several other extras at Miss Holmes's highly fashionable, strictly select academy for young ladies in Huddersfield, and thither and thence I ride on Beauty every day of the blessed week bar Sundays and missin's--but that's an improper word and not to be spoken in genteel society." "A 'cademy! lor, think o' that now," said Hannah much impressed "an' what do they larn yo' now, furrin languages I'll be bun." "Oh dear, yes! I can already relieve my feelings to my aunt in French that she cannot understand, and which I dare say, would puzzle Mons. Feugley, our French master, and I know some German words that sound so like swearing that Aunt Tinker gasps and grows pale when I use them, and I can tinkle on the piano and sing indifferently well for a screechy voice." "That's nooan Gospel, my word," put in Hannah, stoutly, and Lucy held up a reproving finger. "And oh! tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Ascalon." "More furrin' parts" groaned Hannah. "I can, sh! speak low my voice, bend your heads and lend your ears.--I can dance!" "Dance!" gasped Hannah. "Yes, _vraiment_, which is French or German, I forget which, for of a verity and in good sooth--but they don't know at home. It's an extra extra, dancing is and Aunt Martha wouldn't hear of it, and Uncle declared it was a vanity. But I learn all the same." "How do you manage it?" asked Lucy, with an admiring, caressing but wistful look at the beaming face. "Why the other girls teach me, silly, in the bedroom. We dance in our nightdresses, when _Fraulein_ has put out the gas. But it isn't as nice, they say, as dancing with Professor Blanc, _de Paris, vous savez_." "Oh, Dorothy, how can you say such things!" and Lucy looked really shocked.