Page:Hollyhock house; a story for girls (IA hollyhockhousest00tagg).pdf/263

Rh and hunger. As the Marchioness she flaunted herself pertly in rags and with a smutty face, carrying her cribbage board, ready for a game with Dick Swiveller. And as Little Miss Muffet she was incredibly childlike and lovely in a Kate Greenaway costume, carrying her bowl and spoon on her way to look for a tuffet to sit on to eat “her curds and whey,” and murmuring a little song under her breath, like a rhythmic chant of a happy child.

“She’s perfectly wonderful!” Vineclad agreed. Even though there were Vineclad matrons who felt Mrs. Garden’s talent was unsuited to the mother of three big girls, however young a mother she might be, still they all agreed that she “was wonderful.”

The most beautiful picture of the evening, the impersonation longest remembered in Vineclad, was Jane as Ophelia, however. Jane threw herself into her part with such self-forgetfulness, such enthusiasm, talent so extraordinary in so young a girl, that those who knew her best were amazed and a little startled. All in white, with her masses of red-gold hair falling around her, crowned by a wreath of old-time garden flowers, intertwisted with long sprays of wild flowers, which straggled downward and