My Fashionable Life

A figure which stood outside, wrapped in a long green cloak, rushed across the room and up the stairs so quickly that Flora only had the merest glimpse of it. She raised her eyebrows.

‘Who was that?’ she asked, though she was sure that she knew.

‘My cowdling – my liddle Elfine,’ said Adam, listlessly picking up his thorn twig, which had fallen into the snood of porridge on the hearth.

‘Indeed, and does she always charge about like that?’ inquired Flora, coldly; she considered her cousin deficient in manners.

‘Aye. She’s as wild and shy as a pharisee of the woods. Days she’ll be away from home, wanderin’ on the hills, wi’ only the wild birds and the liddle rabbits an’ the spyin’ maggies for company. Aye, and o’ night, too…’ His face darkened. ‘Aye, she’s away then, too, wanderin’ far from those that loves her and cowdled her in their bosoms when she was a mommet. She’ll break my heart into liddle sippets, so she will.’

‘Does she go to school?’ asked Flora, looking distastefully in a cupboard for a rag with which to dust her shoes. ‘How old is she?’

‘Seventeen. Nay, niver talk o’ school for my wennet. Why, Robert Poste’s child, ye might as soon send the white hawthorn or the yellow daffodowndilly to school as my Elfine. She learns from the skies an’ the wild marsh-tiggets, not out o’ books.’

‘How trying,’ observed Flora.

[Flora] had no notion where Judith’s bedroom might be, but she found a guide to take her there. As she reached the head of the stairs, the tall girl in the green cloak, who had just dashed through the kitchen, came running lightly down the corridor towards her. She stopped, as though shot, at the sight of Flora, and stood poised as though for instant flight.

‘Doing the startled bird stunt,’ thought Flora, giving her a pleasant smile; or rather smiling at the hood which half concealed her cousin’s face.

‘What do you want?’ whispered Elfine, stonily.

‘Cousin Judith’s bedroom,’ returned Flora. ‘Would you be a lamb and show me the way? It’s easy to get lost in a large house when everything is strange to one.’

A pair of large blue eyes looked at her steadily above the green hand-woven hood. Flora pensively noted that they were fine eyes, and that the hood was the wrong green.

She said, persuasively, ‘Do forgive me for saying so, but I would love to see you in blue. Some shades of green are good, of course, but dull greens are very trying, I always thing. If I were you, I should try blue – something really well cut, of course, and very simple – but definitely blue. You try it, and see.’

Elfine made a brusque, boyish movement, and said off-handedly, ‘This way.’

She strode along the corridor with a long, swinging step, letting the hood fall back so that Flora could see the back of her unbrushed mane of hair; it might have been a good gold if it had been properly dressed and cared for. It all seemed deplorable to Flora.

‘Here,’ jerked out Elfine, stopping in front of a closed door.

Flora thanked her so much, and Elfine, after another long stare at her, strode away.

‘She will have to be taken in hand at once,’ thought Flora. ‘Another year, and there will be no doing anything with her; for even if she escapes from this place, she will only go and keep a tea-room in Brighton and go all arty-and-crafty about the feet and waist.’