“Rachel, bring down my dinner-dress again. I’m afraid you’ve just got it put away? But I must have it down again, please!” and the maid went off.
“I’d just been showing it to an old friend,” Mrs. Bray explained. “But she made me cross by asking whether I was not afraid of a dinner-party for my rheumatism. A _memento mori_, my dears. But,” she said, turning to Lucy, “here’s a grave face saying to itself that I am a foolish and naughty old woman to care for such frivolities!”
“Oh, no!” protested Lucy. “I was only so sorry that the maid had just put it nicely away.”
“It is all in her duty,” said the old lady with a dash of hauteur. “Rachel is here to do what she is told. It need not matter to her what that is.” Then, as the maid entered with the magnificent robe flung over her arm, the stately old dame gave her instructions how to spread it over an ottoman so as to display its costly lace and elaborate embroidery to the best advantage.
Mrs. Brand exclaimed with admiration, adjusting the folds, and fingering the soft fabric as a connoisseur in its perfections.
Mrs. Bray had drawn Lucy’s hand into her lap, and was stroking it softly.
“Ah, my dear,” she said, “don’t be hard on me for my vanity! Wait till you’ve been married fifty years yourself, and your husband brings you such a dress, and tells you that he does not think anybody but you would do it justice! Think of that, my dear! I see that sweet speech written between all the flounces and furbelows. How can you expect me to keep my eyes off such finery as that?”
“It is very beautiful!” murmured Lucy. But the old lady knew that her real answer was in the quivering clasp of the hand lying in her own.
“How would you like to see mamma in such a dress as that, Hugh?” asked Mrs. Brand.
Hugh gave his head a quaint little shake, as if such an idea was very grand; but he added—
“I shouldn’t be able to sit on her knee.”
“Ah, but you’ll be a grown-up man before your mamma will deserve such a dress!” answered the old lady archly. “Ay, my dear,” she whispered aside to Lucy, “if my little ones had lived to give me grandchildren and great-grandchildren to come crowding round me, maybe I should not have cared so much for this dress, and maybe, too, Mr. Bray would not have been able to afford to give it to me.”