This was very agreeable to Bessie, but Miss Jocund looked like an angry sphinx, and as the defeated nurse appeared she said with suppressed excitement, “Sally, how often must I warn you to keep the boy out of the show-room?  Carry him away.”  The flaxen cherub was born off kicking and howling; Bessie looked as if she were being punished herself, Mrs. Stokes stood confounded, Mrs. Betts turned red.  Only Miss Burleigh seemed unaffected, and inquired simply whose that little boy was. “Mine, ma’am,” replied the milliner with an emphasis that forbade further question.  But Miss Burleigh’s reflective powers were awakened.

Mrs. Betts, that woman of resources and experience, standing with the blue silk slip half dropt on the Scotch carpet at her feet, reverted to the interrupted business of the hour as if there had been no break.  “And if, when it comes to dressing this evening at Lady Angleby’s, there’s not a thing that fits?” she bitterly suggested.

“I will answer for it that everything fits,” said Miss Jocund, recovering herself with more effort.  “I have worked on true principles.  But”—­with a persuasive inclination towards Bessie—­“if Miss Fairfax will condescend to inspect my productions, she will gratify me and herself also.”

As she spoke Miss Jocund threw open the door of an adjoining room, where the said productions were elaborately laid out, and Mrs. Stokes ran in to have the first view.  Miss Burleigh followed.  Bessie, with a rather unworthy distrust, refused to advance beyond the doorway; but, looking in, she beheld clouds upon clouds of blue and white puffery, tulle and tarletan, and shining breadths of silk of the same delicate hues, with fans, gloves, bows, wreaths, shoes, ribbons, sashes, laces—­a portentous confusion.  After a few seconds of disturbed contemplation, during which she was lending an ear to the remote shrieks of that darling boy, she said—­and surely it was provoking!—­“The half would be better than the whole.  I am sorry for you, Mrs. Betts, if you are to have all those works of art on your mind till they are worn out.”

“Indeed, miss, if you don’t show more feeling, my mind will give way,” retorted Mrs. Betts.  “It is the first time in my long experience that ever a young lady so set me at defiance as to refuse to try on new dresses.  And all one’s credit at stake upon her appearance!  In a great house like Brentwood, too!”

Those piercing cries continued to rise higher and higher.  Miss Jocund, with a vexed exclamation, dropped some piece of finery on which she was beginning to dilate, and vanished by another door.  In a minute the noise was redoubled with a passionate intensity.  Bessie’s eyes filled; she knew that old-fashioned discipline was being administered, and her heart ached dreadfully.  She even offered to rush to the rescue, but Mrs. Betts intercepted her with a stern “Better let me do up your hair, miss,” while Mrs. Stokes, moved by sympathetic tenderness, whispered, “Stop your ears; it is necessary, quite necessary, now and then, I assure you.”  Oh, did not Bessie know? had she not little brothers?  When there was silence, Miss Jocund returned, and without allusion to the nursery tragedy resumed her task of displaying the fruits of her toils.