I leave you to imagine the agreeable feelings with
which Philip went to Mr. Deane the next day, to say
that Mr. Wakem was ready to open the negotiations,
and Lucy’s pretty triumph as she appealed to
her father whether she had not proved her great business
abilities. Mr. Deane was rather puzzled, and
suspected that there had been something “going
on” among the young people to which he wanted
a clew. But to men of Mr. Deane’s stamp,
what goes on among the young people is as extraneous
to the real business of life as what goes on among
the birds and butterflies, until it can be shown to
have a malign bearing on monetary affairs. And
in this case the bearing appeared to be entirely propitious.
Charity in Full-Dress
The culmination of Maggie’s career as an admired
member of society in St. Ogg’s was certainly
the day of the bazaar, when her simple noble beauty,
clad in a white muslin of some soft-floating kind,
which I suspect must have come from the stores of
aunt Pullet’s wardrobe, appeared with marked
distinction among the more adorned and conventional
women around her. We perhaps never detect how
much of our social demeanor is made up of artificial
airs until we see a person who is at once beautiful
and simple; without the beauty, we are apt to call
simplicity awkwardness. The Miss Guests were much
too well-bred to have any of the grimaces and affected
tones that belong to pretentious vulgarity; but their
stall being next to the one where Maggie sat, it seemed
newly obvious to-day that Miss Guest held her chin
too high, and that Miss Laura spoke and moved continually
with a view to effect.
All well-dressed St. Ogg’s and its neighborhood
were there; and it would have been worth while to
come even from a distance, to see the fine old hall,
with its open roof and carved oaken rafters, and great
oaken folding-doors, and light shed down from a height
on the many-colored show beneath; a very quaint place,
with broad faded stripes painted on the walls, and
here and there a show of heraldic animals of a bristly,
long-snouted character, the cherished emblems of a
noble family once the seigniors of this now civic hall.
A grand arch, cut in the upper wall at one end, surmounted
an oaken orchestra, with an open room behind it, where
hothouse plants and stalls for refreshments were disposed;
an agreeable resort for gentlemen disposed to loiter,
and yet to exchange the occasional crush down below
for a more commodious point of view. In fact,
the perfect fitness of this ancient building for an
admirable modern purpose, that made charity truly
elegant, and led through vanity up to the supply of
a deficit, was so striking that hardly a person entered
the room without exchanging the remark more than once.
Near the great arch over the orchestra was the stone
oriel with painted glass, which was one of the venerable
inconsistencies of the old hall; and it was close by
