‘Mind you don’t make her walk too fast,’ said the careful Lucy, ’and take care how you take off your muslin, Sophy, you had better go to the nursery for help.’

Gilbert did not seem inclined to hurry his sister as they came near Madame Belmarche’s.  He lingered, and presently said, ’Should you be too tired to come in here for a moment? it was an intolerable shame that none of them were asked.’

’Mamma did beg for Genevieve, but there was so little room, and the Drurys did not like it.  Mrs. Drury said it would only be giving her a taste for things above her station.’

’Then Mrs. Drury should never come out of the scullery.  I am sure she looks as if her station was to black the kettles!’ cried Gilbert, with some domestic confusion in his indignation.  ’Didn’t she look like a housekeeper with her mistress’s things on by mistake?’

‘She did not look like mamma, certainly,’ said Sophy.  ’Mamma looked no more aware that she had on those pretty things than if she had been in her old grey—­’

’Mamma—­yes—­Mrs. Drury might try seventy years to look like mamma, or Genevieve either!  Put Genevieve into satin or into brown holland, you couldn’t help her looking ten times more the lady than Mrs. Drury ever will!  But come in, I have got a bit of the cake for them here, and they will like to see you all figged out, as they have missed all the rest of the show.  Aunt Maria might have cared for her old mistress!’

Sophy wished to be amiable, and refrained from objecting.

It was a holiday in honour of cette chere eleve of five-and-twenty years since, and the present pupils were from their several homes watching for the first apparition of the four greys from the King’s Head, with the eight white satin rosettes at their eight ears.

Madame Belmarche and her daughter were discovered in the parlour, cooking with a stew pan over the fire a concoction which Sophy guessed to be a conserve of the rose-leaves yearly begged of the pupils, which were chiefly useful as serving to be boiled up at any leisure moment, to make a cosmetic for Mademoiselle’s complexion.  She had diligently used it these forty-five years, but the effect was not encouraging, as brown, wrinkled, with her frizzled front awry, with not stainless white apron, and a long pewter spoon, she turned round to confront the visitors in their wedding finery.

But what Frenchwoman ever was disconcerted?  Away went the spoon, forward she sprang, both hands outstretched, and her little black eyes twinkling with pleasure.  ‘Ah! but this is goodness itself,’ said she, in the English wherein she flattered herself no French idiom appeared.  ’You are come to let us participate in your rejoicing.  Let me but summon Genevieve, the poor child is at every free moment trying to perfectionnate her music in the school-room.’