Chapter VI.

       Queen Elsie Visits the Court

       Table of Contents

      ‘An hour and friend with friend will meet,

       Lip cling to lip and hand clasp hand.’

      ‘Now, Laura,’ asked Bell, when quiet was restored, ‘advise us about Elsie’s tent. We want it to be perfectly lovely; and you have such good taste!’

      ‘Let me think,’ said Laura. ‘Oh, if she were only a brunette instead of a blonde, we could festoon the tent with that yellow tarlatan I brought for the play!’

      ‘What difference does it make whether she is dark or light?’ asked Bell, obtusely.

      ‘Why, a room ought to be as becoming as a dress—so Mrs. Pinkerton says. You know I saw a great deal of her at the hotel; and oh, girls! her bedroom was the most exquisite thing you ever saw! She had a French toilet-table, covered with pale blue silk and white marquise lace,—perfectly lovely,—with yards and yards of robin’s-egg blue watered ribbon in bows; and on it she kept all her toilet articles, everything in hammered silver from Tiffany’s with monograms on the back,—three or four sizes of brushes, and combs, and mirrors, and a full manicure set. It used to take her two hours to dress; but it was worth it. Oh, such gorgeous tea-gowns as she had! One of old rose and lettuce was a perfect dream! She always had her breakfast in bed, you know. I think it’s delightful to have your breakfast before you get up, and dress as slowly as you like. I wish mamma would let me do it.’

      ‘What does she do after she gets dressed in her rows of old lettuce—I mean her old rows of lettuce?’ asked Polly.

      ‘Do? Why really, Polly, you are too stupid! What do you suppose she did? What everybody else does, of course.’

      ‘Oh!’ said Polly, apologetically.

      ‘How old is Mrs. Pinkerton?’ asked Margery.

      ‘Between nineteen and twenty. There is not three years’ difference in our ages, though she has been married nearly two years. It seems so funny.’

      ‘Only nineteen!’ cried Bell. ‘Why, I always thought that she was old as the hills—twenty-five or thirty at the very least. She always seemed tired of things.’

      ‘Well,’ said Laura, in a whisper intended to be too low to reach Mrs. Winship’s tent, ‘I don’t know whether I ought to repeat what was told me in confidence, but the fact is—well—she doesn’t like Mr. Pinkerton very well!’

      The other girls, who had not enjoyed the advantages of city life and travel, looked as dazed as any scandalmonger could have desired.

      ‘Don’t like him!’ gasped Polly, nearly falling off the stump. ‘Why, she’s married to him!’

      ‘Where on earth were you brought up?’ snapped Laura. ‘What difference does that make? She can’t help it if she doesn’t happen to like her husband, can she? You can’t make yourself like anybody, can you?’

      ‘Well, did she ever like him?’ asked Margery; ‘for she’s only been married a year or two, and it seems to me it might have lasted that long if there was anything to begin on.’

      ‘But,’ whispered Laura, mysteriously, ‘you see Mr. Pinkerton was very rich and the Dentons very poor. Mr. Denton had just died, leaving them nothing at all to live on, and poor Jessie would have had to teach school, or some dreadful thing like that. The thought of it almost killed her, she is so sensitive and so refined. She never told me so in so many words, but I am sure she married Mr. Pinkerton to save her mother from poverty; and I pity her from the bottom of my heart.’

      ‘I suppose it was noble,’ said Bell, in a puzzled tone, ‘if she couldn’t think of any other way, but—’

      ‘Well, did she try very hard to think of other ways?’ asked Polly. ‘She never looked especially noble to me. I thought she seemed like a die-away, frizzlygig kind of a girl.’

      ‘I wish, Miss Oliver, that you would be kind enough to remember that Mrs. Pinkerton is one of my most intimate friends,’ said Laura, sharply. ‘And I do wish, also, that you wouldn’t talk loud enough to be heard all through the cañon.’

      The colour came into Polly’s cheeks, but before she could answer, Mrs. Winship walked in, stocking-basket in hand, and seated herself in the little wicker rocking-chair. Polly’s clarion tones had given her a clue to the subject, and she thought the discussion needed guidance.

      ‘You were talking about Mrs. Pinkerton, girls,’ she said, serenely. ‘You say you are fond of her, Laura, dear, and it seems very ungracious for me to criticise your friend; that is a thing which most of us fail to bear patiently. But I cannot let you hold her up as an ideal to be worshipped, or ask the girls to admire as a piece of self-denial what I fear was nothing but indolence and self-gratification. You are too young to talk of these things very much; but you are not too young to make up your mind that when you agree to live all your life long with a person, you must have some other feeling than a determination not to teach school. Jessie Denton’s mother, my dear Laura, would never have asked the sacrifice of her daughter’s whole life; and Jessie herself would never have made it had she been less vain, proud, and luxurious in her tastes, and a little braver, more self-forgetting and industrious. These are hard words, dear, and I am sorry to use them. She has gained the riches she wanted,—the carriages and servants, and tea-gowns, and hammered silver from Tiffany’s, but she looks tired and disappointed, as Bell says; and I’ve no doubt she is, poor girl.’

      ‘I don’t think you do her justice, Mrs. Winship; I don’t, indeed,’ said Laura.

      ‘If you are really attached to her, Laura, don’t make the mistake of admiring her faults of character, but try to find her better