“Oh, the selfishness of these girls!” cried the deserted one.  “I have got her a husband to her taste, so now she runs away from me to think of him.”

The next moment she looked at the enormity from another point of view, and then with this burst of injured virtue gave way to a steady complacency.

“She is caught at last.  She notices his very voice.  She fancies she cares for politics—­ha! ha!  She is gone to meditate on him—­could not bear any other topic—­would not even talk about dress, a thing her whole soul was wrapped up in till now.  I have known her to go on for hours at a stretch about it.”

There are people with memories so constructed that what they said, and another did not contradict or even answer, seems to them, upon retrospect, to have been delivered by that other person, and received in dead silence by themselves.

Meantime Lucy was in her own room and the door bolted.

So she was the next day; and uneasy Mrs. Bazalgette came hunting her, and tapped at the door after first trying the handle, which in Lucy’s creed was not a discreet and polished act.

“Nobody admitted here till three o’clock.”

“It is me, Lucy.”

“So I conclude,” said Lucy gayly. “‘Me’ must call again at three, whoever it is.”

“Not I,” said Aunt Bazalgette, and flounced off in a pet.

At three Dignity dissolved in curiosity, and Mrs. Bazalgette entered her niece’s room in an ill-temper; it vanished like smoke at the sight of two new dresses, peach-colored and glacees, just finished, lying on the bed.  An eager fire of questions.  “Where did you get them? which is mine? who made them?”

“A new dressmaker.”

“Ah! what a godsend to poor us!  Who is she?”

“Let me see how you like her work before I tell you.  Try this one on.”

Mrs. Bazalgette tried on her dress, and was charmed with it.  Lucy would not try on hers.  She said she had done so, and it fitted well enough for her.

“Everything fits you, you witch,” replied the B.  “I must have this woman’s address; she is an angel.”

Lucy looked pleased.  “She is only a beginner, but desirous to please you; and ‘zeal goes farther than talent,’ says Mr. Dodd.”

“Mr. Dodd!  Ah! by-the-by, that reminds me—­I am so glad you mentioned his name.  Where does the woman live?”

“The woman, or, as some consider her, the girl, lives at present with a charming person called by the world Mrs. Bazalgette, but by the dressmaker her sweet little aunt—­” (kiss) (kiss) (kiss); and Lucy, whose natural affection for this lady was by a certain law of nature heated higher by working day and night for her in secret, felt a need of expansion, and curled, round her like a serpent with a dove’s heart.

Mrs. Bazalgette did what you and I, manly reader, should have been apt to omit.  She extricated herself, not roughly, yet a little hastily—­like a water-snake gliding out of the other sweet serpent’s folds.* Sacred dress being present, she deemed caresses frivolous—­and ill-timed.  “There, there, let me alone, child, and tell me all about it directly.  ’What put it into your head?  Who taught you?  Is this your first attempt?  Have you paid for the silk, or am I to?  Do tell me quick; don’t keep me on thorns!”