Page:Neith Boyce--The bond.djvu/255

Rh him. Mamma looks so old and fat and never does her hair nicely. She never has any good clothes. Papa's boots cost eighty lire a pair! I shall have good clothes. Do you think I'm pretty, Aunt?"

"No, not exactly. You have nice eyes and hair," Teresa had said coolly.

"I have beautiful eyes—you know it. And that's the main thing. I know I shall be pretty."

"Is that all you think about, Ernestine—clothes and looks?"

"Well, no. I think about my animals—I have a King Charles spaniel and four cats. And I think about stories, and my friends, and about people a lot—what grown-up people do, and what I shall do when I'm grown-up. It isn't very amusing being a little girl—everybody thinks you're a stupid thing and always in the way. Mamma thinks I'm stupid because I don't do my lessons well, or learn the beastly piano. But you don't think so, do you, Aunt?"

"No, I think you're horridly sharp," Teresa had said. "That's what Papa says," was Ernestine's satisfied response.

Teresa had perceived, at the end of two weeks' stay in Paris with Nina and her two elder children, that Ernestine liked her. The other daughter, Elaine, was a shy creature, always ailing, with Nina's blue eyes. The three boys, whom