Louisiana. Burnett Frances Hodgson

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      She did not raise her eyes from the carpet as she replied, unsteadily:

      "It's Louisiana."

      Miss Ferrol answered her very composedly:

      "The name of the state?"

      "Yes. Father came from there."

      "But you did not tell me your surname."

      "Oh! that is Rogers. You – you didn't laugh. I thought you would."

      "At the first name?" replied Miss Ferrol. "Oh no. It is unusual – but names often are. And Louise is pretty."

      "So it is," she said, brightening. "I never thought of that. I hate Louisa. They will call it 'Lowizy,' or 'Lousyanny.' I could sign myself Louise, couldn't I?"

      "Yes," Miss Ferrol replied.

      And then her protégée said "good-night" for the third time, and disappeared.

      CHAPTER II.

      WORTH

      She presented herself at the bed-room door with a timid knock the next morning before breakfast, evidently expecting to be taken charge of. Miss Ferrol felt sure she would appear, and had, indeed, dressed herself in momentary expectation of hearing the knock.

      When she heard it she opened the door at once.

      "I am glad to see you," she said. "I thought you might come."

      A slight expression of surprise showed itself in the girl's eyes. It had never occurred to her that she might not come.

      "Oh, yes," she replied. "I never could go down alone when there was any one who would go with me."

      There was something on her mind, Miss Ferrol fancied, and presently it burst forth in a confidential inquiry.

      "Is this dress very short-waisted?" she asked, with great earnestness.

      Merciful delicacy stood in the way of Miss Ferrol's telling her how short-waisted it was, and how it maltreated her beautiful young body.

      "It is rather short-waisted, it is true."

      "Perhaps," the girl went on, with a touch of guileless melancholy, "I am naturally this shape."

      Here, it must be confessed, Miss Ferrol forgot herself for the moment, and expressed her indignation with undue fervor.

      "Perish the thought!" she exclaimed. "Why, child! your figure is a hundred times better than mine."

      Louisiana wore for a moment a look of absolute fright.

      "Oh, no!" she cried. "Oh, no. Your figure is magnificent."

      "Magnificent!" echoed Miss Ferrol, giving way to her enthusiasm, and indulging in figures of speech. "Don't you see that I am thin – absolutely thin. But my things fit me, and my dressmaker understands me. If you were dressed as I am," – pausing to look her over from head to foot – "Ah!" she exclaimed, pathetically, "how I should like to see you in some of my clothes!"

      A tender chord was touched. A gentle sadness, aroused by this instance of wasted opportunities, rested upon her. But instantaneously she brightened, seemingly without any particular cause. A brilliant idea had occurred to her. But she did not reveal it.

      "I will wait," she thought, "until she is more at her ease with me."

      She really was more at her ease already. Just this one little scrap of conversation had done that. She became almost affectionate in a shy way before they reached the dining-room.

      "I want to ask you something," she said, as they neared the door.

      "What is it?"

      She held Miss Ferrol back with a light clasp on her arm. Her air was quite tragic in a small way.

      "Please say 'Louise,' when you speak to me," she said. "Never say 'Miss Louisiana' – never – never!"

      "No, I shall never say 'Miss Louisiana,'" her companion answered. "How would you like 'Miss Rogers?'"

      "I would rather have 'Louise,'" she said, disappointedly.

      "Well," returned Miss Ferrol, "'Louise' let it be."

      And "Louise" it was thenceforward. If she had not been so pretty, so innocent, and so affectionate and humble a young creature, she might have been troublesome at times (it occurred to Olivia Ferrol), she clung so pertinaciously to their chance acquaintanceship; she was so helpless and desolate if left to herself, and so inordinately glad to be taken in hand again. She made no new friends, – which was perhaps natural enough, after all. She had nothing in common with the young women who played ten-pins and croquet and rode out in parties with their cavaliers. She was not of them, and understood them as little as they understood her. She knew very well that they regarded her with scornful tolerance when they were of the ill-natured class, and with ill-subdued wonder when they were amiable. She could not play ten-pins or croquet, nor could she dance.

      "What are the men kneeling down for, and why do they keep stopping to put on those queer little caps and things?" she whispered to Miss Ferrol one night.

      "They are trying to dance a German," replied Miss Ferrol, "and the man who is leading them only knows one figure."

      As for the riding, she had been used to riding all her life; but no one asked her to join them, and if they had done so she would have been too wise, – unsophisticated as she was, – to accept the invitation. So where Miss Ferrol was seen she was seen also, and she was never so happy as when she was invited into her protector's room and allowed to spend the morning or evening there. She would have been content to sit there forever and listen to Miss Ferrol's graphic description of life in the great world: The names of celebrated personages made small impression upon her. It was revealed gradually to Miss Ferrol that she had private doubts as to the actual existence of some of them, and the rest she had never heard of before.

      "You never read 'The Scarlet Letter?'" asked her instructress upon one occasion.

      She flushed guiltily.

      "No," she answered. "Nor – nor any of the others."

      Miss Ferrol gazed at her silently for a few moments. Then she asked her a question in a low voice, specially mellowed, so that it might not alarm her.

      "Do you know who John Stuart Mill is?" she said.

      "No," she replied from the dust of humiliation.

      "Have you never heard – just heard– of Ruskin?"

      "No."

      "Nor of Michael Angelo?"

      "N-no – ye-es, I think so – perhaps, but I don't know what he did."

      "Do you," she continued, very slowly, "do – you – know – anything – about – Worth?"

      "No, nothing."

      Her questioner clasped her hands with repressed emotion.

      "Oh," she cried, "how – how you have been neglected!"

      She СКАЧАТЬ