"Don't wait breakfast for me, please," she says, when she has been
called for the third or fourth time, and if she can get us to sit down
without her she seems to think it all right, and that she can dawdle as
much as she likes.
I wonder that it never occurs to her that to keep the breakfast table
round, as we must, makes the girls cross and upsets the kitchen
generally. I hinted as much to her once when the table stood till ten
o'clock, and she only opened her great blue eyes wonderingly, and said
mamma had spoiled her, but she would try and do better, and she bade
Zillah call her at five the next morning, and Zillah called her, and
then she was a half-hour late. Guy doesn't like that, and he looked
daggers on the night of the reception, when the guests began to arrive
before she was dressed! And she commenced her toilet, too, at three
o'clock! But she was wondrously beautiful in her bridal robes, and took
all hearts by storm. She is perfectly at home in society, and knows just
what to do and say so long as the conversation keeps in the fashionable
round of chit-chat, but when it drifts into deeper channels she is
silent at once, or only answers in monosyllables. I believe she is a
good French scholar, and she plays and sings tolerably well, and reads
the novels as they come out, but of books and literature, in general,
she is wholly ignorant, and if Guy thought to find in her any sympathy
with his favorite studies and authors he is terribly mistaken.
And yet, as I write all this, my conscience gives me sundry little
pricks as if I were wronging her, for in spite of her faults I like her,
and like to watch her flitting through the house and grounds like the
little fairy she is, and I hope the marriage may turn out well, and that
she will improve with age, and not make so heavy drafts on my brother's
purse.