Chapter I: Diana's Story

"Here comes Diana of the Ephesians! Ask her what the thinks!"

I, Diana Carew, am the person thus apostrophized. The speaker is my only brother, Wyndham--commonly called Curly--Carew. The third person is my father,--God bless him! A dearer, kinder father never breathed.

He smiles, and lays his hand on my shoulder, as having deposited my burden--a jet-black kitten and a creamy-white one--one on each of Curly's shoulders, I seat myself on his knee.

"Read that, Di," he says, putting into my hand a heavily-crested and monogramed envelope, directed in a lady-like hand to Wyndham Carew, Esq.

With eager curiosity I take out the note it contains, and read as follows:

"DEAR MR. CAREW,--

"We really cannot allow you to condemn your pretty daughter"--(I feel flattered, and blush a little: it is not often I have that adjective applied to me.)

"Aha, Miss Vanity!" cries Curly, "I see the rose come to your damask cheek at the soft impeachment. Proceed, _pretty daughter_."

"Don't interrupt her, Curly."

--"To the hermit's life," I read on, "you persist in leading yourself,--much to the regret and disappointment of your neighbors."

"Who is this polite lady?" I inquire, referring to the end of the note. "Oh, Mrs. Warrington!"

"We have some friends coming to us on New Year's Day, and if you, with your son and daughter, will spend a few days here, we shall be delighted to see you all. We hope to prevail upon you to join us; but, if you are as resolute as usual in declining all invitations, do not deprive us of the pleasure of seeing your young people. Mr. Warrington has still some fair shooting left, if that will be any inducement to you personally; and he bids me say he will mount your son as often as he likes. Tell Miss Carew we shall have a little dancing, and, I hope, some other amusements for the young ladies. I warn you I do not intend to take any refusal as far as she is concerned; and if you do not yield at once to my request, I shall come over and press it personally.

"Mr. Warrington joins me in kindest regards, and believe me, dear Mr. Carew,

"Very sincerely yours,
"GEORGIANA WARRINGTON."

My eyes glisten, the color deepens in my face as I read, and when I have finished I look up eagerly in my father's face.

"Well, my dear" (his kind eyes shining tenderly upon me), "what do you say?"

"Oh, papa, _could_ we go?"

"I suppose you would like it very much?"

"Oh!" (with a great sigh, which, if it expresses what I feel, must speak volumes).

"If you do not, people will think I am a tyrannical old ogre, who keeps you shut up like the fathers in story-books."

"Oh, dad, do let us go!" cries Curly, with enthusiasm. "It will be such glorious fun!--and old Warrington has such splendid horses. _I'll_ show them the way!" (his blue eyes flashing with delight at the bare thought of hunting on one of Mr. Warrington's mounts).

"My dear fellow, suppose you staked or broke the back or threw one of his two-hundred-guinea hunters! How would you feel?"

"Never fear, dad: I'll be as steady as old Time."

"Well," says papa, thoughtfully, "if you are both so anxious, I do not see any very important objection to your going."

"But you will go too?" we both cry, in a breath.

He shakes his head, and sighs a little.

"No, children, my visiting days are over, and you know I do not care to accept kindnesses I cannot return."

"Then _I_ shall not go,--that is very certain," I say, decisively, but with a little swelling of disappointment in my throat.

"Nor I," adds Curly, in a dejected tone.

Our father looks at us both with a fond smile.

"What! do you think I am not to be trusted by myself for a few days?" he asks, putting a hand on each of our shoulders. "Mrs. Warrington is quite right. I must not keep Di shut up forever. It is time she came out; and I do not know any one under whose auspices I should better like her to do so than Mrs. Warrington's. Why, how old are you, Di? Seventeen?"

"Eighteen last month, papa, you know," I answer, reproachfully. "But I shall _not_ go without you. I shouldn't care the _least_ for it. And, besides," as a sudden and most important reflection occurs to me, "_I have nothing to go in._"

"Beauty unadorned's adorned the most," spouts Curly. "Thank Heaven!" (grandly), "those considerations don't affect me!"

"Ah!" says my father, ruefully, "I forgot that. To be sure, that is a very important point. And I suppose" (looking at me inquiringly) "ladies' dress is a tremendous business in the present day."

"Oh, yes," I reply, cheerfully, having quite made up my mind now to the impossibility of going. "Miss Pratt told me that when she was at Lady Gwyneth Desborough's for three days, the ladies changed their dresses four times a day, and had different ones every day."

"Indeed!" says papa, smiling. "But I do not suppose you would be expected to dress like Lady Gwyneth, though I hardly fancy she had many more dresses than you have, before she married poor little Desborough."

"Well," I reply, with more emphasis than elegance, "I would rather go about in a cotton gown all my life than have married _him_!"

"Oh, he isn't a bad little chap," remarks Curly, "if he wasn't so dreadfully ashamed of the shop, and so fond of talking about his father-in-law the earl."

"But, Di," puts in my father, "you must have one or two dresses, I suppose. You always seem to me" (doubtfully) "to look very nice."

I shake my head.

"Only this," pointing to my well-worn serge, "and an old black silk for Sundays, that has been turned twice, and a white muslin, so shrunk that the body wouldn't meet last time it came from the wash. No" (with mournful emphasis), "it is very certain I cannot go to Mrs. Warrington's."

"Oh, dear!" cries Curly, ruefully, "what a selfish beggar I have been, running the Dad up such tailors' bills at Eton, and all the time poor little Di has had to do without."

"Why, Curly," I respond, quickly, "what in the world do I want with clothes here? And if you were different from the other boys--I mean fellows--at Eton, it would never do."

"Come," says my father, "it's not too late now. Gay and you must lay your heads together and see what can be done. I think I have a ten-pound note somewhere, and I suppose if you had a dress for the day, and another for the evening, that would do just for a few days."

"Ten pounds!" I cry. The idea of spending such a sum all at once upon my dress seems preposterous. "But I am not going. Curly can go; you and I will stop at home together, papa, and be as happy as--as----"

"As what?" asks papa, smiling.

"As anything," I respond, lamely, not finding a suitable, comparison.

"Now, I have made up my mind that you shall both go," says my father, "so I shall proceed to my room and write to Mrs. Warrington that you and Curly will be there on New Year's Day. And you, Di, go and consult with Gay; you have a fortnight before you to prepare."

"Papa," I say, obstinately, "I will _not_ go. I do not care about it; indeed I do not."

"You will be a good, obedient little daughter, and do as I tell you," he answers, going off to write the letter, and leaving me irresolute and uncomfortable in my mind.

"Curly," I say, appealing distressedly to my brother, "I _can't_--I _won't_ go, and leave papa."

"Nonsense, Di! the Dad will be happy enough. You'll have to leave him some day, when you get married."

"Get married!" I retort, in exceeding scorn. "Yes, a great deal of chance of that! Why" (reflecting), "I don't suppose I've spoken to a man--a gentleman, at least--since I was grown up."

"What, not old Stiggins?"

"Don't speak disrespectfully of your spiritual pastors and masters, sir; but I don't call him a man."

"Ho, ho! I wonder which he would call the most disrespectful?--you or I?"

"Well" (sighing), "I will go and talk to Gay. Oh, Curly! don't pull Othello's tail."

Othello is the black kitten; the white one rejoices in the name of Desdemona.

"I'll come too." And he marches off to the housekeeper's room, by courtesy, where Gay, our faithful old nurse and general factotum, sits darning stockings for the million.

Curly throws open the door.

"Her Majesty the Queen and His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales," he commences, in a loud and important voice, "having for some time past remarked a dearth of beauty about the court, and hearing that, in the wilds of Blankshire, there blooms unseen an exquisite creature of the name of Diana Carew, hereby intimate that her presence is forthwith commanded at Buckingham Palace; which being interpreted, my dear old Susannah, means that Di is going to pay a swell visit, and that you have to set about providing her with a suitable wardrobe."

"What ever does the boy mean?" cries Gay, bewildered, looking up at us over her spectacles.

"What I say, O unbelieving Jewess," dragging her work from her surprised hands and shying it to the farther corner of the room. "Away with melancholy!--away with worsted stockings! From henceforth Diana will walk in silk attire,--will captivate the heart of some lord of high degree, and restore the shattered fortunes of the house of Carew." And Curly, in the blitheness of his young heart, hugs his old nurse, to the great detriment of her cap-strings.

She tries to look angry and to expostulate, but who can be angry with Curly? Of all the cheery faces, of all the beaming blue eyes brimful of laughter, of all the curly golden locks whence he gets his sobriquet, there are none to equal those of my young brother; and, more than that, he has the sweetest disposition and the kindest heart in the world. If he is a little aggravating sometimes, I should like to know what a boy is worth whose animal spirits do not run away with him now and then.

"Now, Miss Di, my dear, do you tell me what it's all to do with," says Gay, apostrophizing me in despair of getting any rational answer out of her pet,--for Curly is her pet without a shadow of doubt, and I don't know that I am very jealous of her preference. Don't we all pet and adore him?

"We are invited to Warrington Hall," I answer, "and papa wishes us to go; he won't go himself."

"Oh, my dear, what _will_ you do for clothes?" cries practical Gay, at once closing with the obstacle that had only been an after-thought with me.

"Papa has offered to give me ten pounds; but what is the use of wasting _all_ that money in clothes?" I say, lugubriously. "After all, I don't suppose I should enjoy going to Warrington very much. I think I'll run down and ask papa to decline for me."

"Rash girl, forbear!" cries Curly, catching me by the arm, and striking a tragic attitude. "I've made up my mind you _shall_ go, and I prophesy you will meet my future brother-in-law, who will be rich, and who will mount me and give me shooting, pay my debts, and, in short, make himself a convenience to me generally. You know, Di" (holding me at arm's length and looking critically at me), "though I say it who shouldn't, you're not altogether what one would call an ugly girl; rather the other way.

Your hair is like the raven's wing,
Your brown eyes flash like anything.

Hold on I till I get two more lines to rhyme.

Your pearly teeth and coral lip,
And nose just turned up at the tip,

I end, laughing.

"By jingo, that makes a complete portrait: don't it, Susannah, my dear?"

"Well, Master Curly, _I_ don't see that her nose turns up at the tip. I'm sure a straighter one----"

"Now, Gay," I cry, rudely breaking in upon her defense of my appearance, "never mind my nose, but let's think of what I am to wear, if I do go after all."

"I suppose ten pounds wouldn't buy a velvet gown, would it?" asks Curly, doubtfully.

"A velvet gown!" I laugh. "A nice matronly old person you would make of me!"

"Indeed," he retorts, "I can tell you Archdale's sisters both have velvet gowns, and they are younger than you,--at least, one of them is; but," dropping his voice, "he told me they cost five-and-twenty guineas each."

"Well," I return, with some contempt, "I am not Archdale's sister, and if I had twenty-five guineas I think I could employ them better."

"Di," says Curly, laying a hand on my shoulder, "I don't think you'll find ten pounds go quite so far as you think, and" (blushing a little) "if you should want any more I have a fiver that I've been saving up and haven't any very particular use for."

For answer I throw my arms round his neck and give him a fervent hug, whilst Gay contemplates us both with an expression of beatitude, murmuring,--

"Lord bless the dear children!"