She made her
morning tour of inspection of the stables and the dairy, and ordered
the big chestnut to be saddled directly after breakfast.
When her father came down she was relieved to find that he seemed to be
in his usual health; and in answer to her question whether he had slept
well, he replied in the affirmative, and was mildly surprised that she
should enquire. Directly he had gone off to the library she ran
upstairs to put on her habit.
For the first time she was struck by its shabbiness; she had never
given a thought to it before. Her evening-dresses, though plain and
inexpensive, were always dainty and fresh, but she wore her habit as
long as it would hold together, and cared nothing for the fact that her
hat was stained by the rain: they were her "working clothes," and
strictly considered as such. But this morning she surveyed the skirt
ruefully, and thought of the trim and apparently always new habits
which the Bannerdale girls wore; and she brushed it with a care which
it had never yet received. As a rule she wore a black scarf, or none at
all; but as she looked at herself in the glass she was not satisfied,
and she found a scarlet tie which she had bought in a fit of
extravagance, and put it on.
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