“Depend you on it, my dear,” said Mrs. Sumfit, “my Dahly’s grown above him.  That’s nettles to your uncle, my dear.  He can’t abide it.  Don’t you see he can’t?  Some men’s like that.  Others ’d see you dressed like a princess, and not be satisfied.  They vary so, the teasin’ creatures!  But one and all, whether they likes it or not, owns a woman’s the better for bein’ dressed in the fashion.  What do grieve me to my insidest heart, it is your bonnet.  What a bonnet that was lying beside her dear round arm in the po’trait, and her finger up making a dimple in her cheek, as if she was thinking of us in a sorrowful way.  That’s the arts o’ being lady-like—­look sad-like.  How could we get a bonnet for you?”

“My own must do,” said Rhoda.

“Yes, and you to look like lady and servant-gal a-goin’ out for an airin’; and she to feel it!  Pretty, that’d be!”

“She won’t be ashamed of me,” Rhoda faltered; and then hummed a little tune, and said firmly—­“It’s no use my trying to look like what I’m not.”

“No, truly;” Mrs. Sumfit assented.  “But it’s your bein’ behind the fashions what hurt me.  As well you might be an old thing like me, for any pleasant looks you’ll git.  Now, the country—­you’re like in a coalhole for the matter o’ that.  While London, my dear, its pavement and gutter, and omnibus traffic; and if you’re not in the fashion, the little wicked boys of the streets themselves ’ll let you know it; they’ve got such eyes for fashions, they have.  And I don’t want my Dahly’s sister to be laughed at, and called ‘coal-scuttle,’ as happened to me, my dear, believe it or not—­and shoved aside, and said to—­’Who are you?’ For she reely is nice-looking.  Your uncle Anthony and Mr. Robert agreed upon that.”

Rhoda coloured, and said, after a time, “It would please me if people didn’t speak about my looks.”

The looking-glass probably told her no more than that she was nice to the eye, but a young man who sees anything should not see like a mirror, and a girl’s instinct whispers to her, that her image has not been taken to heart when she is accurately and impartially described by him.

The key to Rhoda at this period was a desire to be made warm with praise of her person.  She beheld her face at times, and shivered.  The face was so strange with its dark thick eyebrows, and peculiarly straight-gazing brown eyes; the level long red under-lip and curved upper; and the chin and nose, so unlike Dahlia’s, whose nose was, after a little dip from the forehead, one soft line to its extremity, and whose chin seemed shaped to a cup.  Rhoda’s outlines were harder.  There was a suspicion of a heavenward turn to her nose, and of squareness to her chin.  Her face, when studied, inspired in its owner’s mind a doubt of her being even nice to the eye, though she knew that in exercise, and when smitten by a blush, brightness and colour aided her claims.  She knew also that her head was easily poised on her neck; and that her figure was reasonably good; but all this was unconfirmed knowledge, quickly shadowed by the doubt.  As the sun is wanted to glorify the right features of a landscape, this girl thirsted for a dose of golden flattery.  She felt, without envy of her sister, that Dahlia eclipsed her:  and all she prayed for was that she might not be quite so much in the background and obscure.