Dumps – A Plain Girl

She soon had a nice fire blazing; she then brought me in a comfortable hot bath, and finally a little tray with a cup of tea and a thin slice of bread-and-butter.

“Now, miss,” she said, “you can get up and dress slowly. Missis said she won’t have breakfast until a quarter to nine this morning, and it is only a quarter to eight now. And, miss, them are the clothes. They’re all beautifully aired, and ready to put on, and missis says that you’ll understand.”

Really it was exciting. It seemed to me that I had been wafted into Fairyland. I sipped my tea and ate my bread-and-butter, and thought what a delightful place Fairyland was, and that, after all, none of the children’s books had half described its glories. I then got up and dressed luxuriously, and at last turned to the chair on which lay the costume I was to wear that day. There was a very pretty skirt of a rich dark-blue; it was trimmed all round the edge with grey fur, and I did not think that in all my life I had ever seen anything quite so lovely. It had even further advantages, for when I walked it made a swishing sound, and raising the skirt, I saw that it was lined with silk.

Now, Hannah had once described to me the wonderful glories of a dress which had belonged to her mother, and which was lined with silk. She said she had bought it at a pawnbroker’s, and she knew quite well the last owner had been a duchess, for only duchesses could afford to wear such an expensive thing as silk hidden away under the skirt.

The bodice of this costume was as pretty as the skirt; it was also silk-lined, and full of little quaint puffings, and there was fur round the neck and on the cuffs. It fitted me to perfection, and I do think that even Dumps looked better in that dark-blue dress, with its grey fur, than I had believed it possible for her to appear in anything.

But there were even further delights; for the dark-blue dress had a beautiful dark-blue coat to match, and there was a little grey fur cap to be worn with it, and a grey fur muff. Oh dear, dear, I was made! And yet there were further treasures to be revealed. I had not seen them before, but I had to put them on before I went down to breakfast – neat stockings of the very finest cashmere, and little shoes with rosettes and buckles. There were also walking shoes of the most refined and delicate make. And, wonder of wonders! they fitted me. I felt indeed that I had come to Fairyland!

Miss Donnithorne was far too much of a lady to make any remark when I came into the room in my dark-blue costume for breakfast. She hardly glanced at me, but went deliberately to the sideboard and began to carve some delicate slices of rosy ham.

I sat down facing the fire. I felt almost self-conscious in the glories of that wonderful costume, and Miss Donnithorne must have guessed that I would have such feelings. She therefore began to talk in her most matter-of-fact style.

“We shall have a very busy day, Rachel,” she said. “There is not much time even for us to finish breakfast, for I have a class in the Sunday-school, and you, if you like, can come with me. Of course, if you prefer it, you can come to church later with Nancy.”

“Oh, I should much prefer to go with you,” I replied.

“That’s right – that’s right,” said Miss Donnithorne. “After church we go straight to the Aldyces’; they’ll take us in their carriage. We shall dine with them, and I think you might like Hermione to come back to have tea with us.”

“You are good,” I said. “It does sound wonderful.”

Then I added, as I broke a piece of crisp toast in two, “I have never ridden in a carriage in all my life.”

“Oh, you are not at all remarkable in that,” replied Miss Donnithorne in her frank way. “London girls, unless their fathers happen to be very rich, don’t have carriages to drive in. But there is one thing I would bid you remember, Dumps.”

“What is that?” I asked, raising my eyes to her face.

“You will meet, my dear, in your way through life, all sorts and conditions of men and women, rich and poor, lowly and haughty, and you will have to remember distinctions. One man may be better than his neighbour; one man may be lower than his neighbour; but the thing that makes the difference between man and man is not what he possesses, but what he is in himself. Now, your father, my dear Rachel, happens to be a much greater and much more distinguished man than Squire Aldyce.”

I wondered why she spoke so. Her laughing eyes were not laughing now; they were wonderfully serious; and her lips wore a remarkable expression of great firmness and yet of great sweetness.

“I am proud to know Professor Grant,” she said, “and you ought to be an exceedingly proud girl to be his daughter.”

“Oh, I love him very much,” I said; but then I added a little tremblingly, “My brother Alex has sometimes told me that father is a great scholar, but I didn’t know – I didn’t understand that all the world – I mean that other people knew about him.”

“Bless the child!” said Miss Donnithorne. “She has been brought up, so to speak, in the dark. You are a little mole, Dumps. You have kept your eyes shut. Some day you will realise what the Professor really is. He has a bigger brain than any other man I happen to know about. He is the foremost man in a most advanced realm of thought; his powers of imagination are great. Did he live in another age, he might have been a second Milton. You ought to be very, very proud indeed to be his daughter.”

It was thus she spoke to me, and so I quite forgot about the dark-blue costume, and accompanied her to Sunday-school, feeling composed and at the same time proud.

The Sunday-school was a very nice one, and the children were the ordinary sort of children one meets in the country. The superintendent of the school came up and shook hands with me. He said he was very proud to meet Professor Grant’s daughter. It was quite amazing – Fairyland was growing more dazzling each moment. It was not only that I was lifted right out of my ugly surroundings, but that I, plain as I was, was turned into a sort of princess. Surely no princess had ever worn a more lovely dress; and surely no princess could hold her head higher, if what Miss Donnithorne said about my father was true.

In church I regret to say that I more than once stroked the grey fur muff and softly felt the texture of my dress. But after church was over fresh excitement was in store for me.

Hermione Aldyce was waiting in the church porch for us. She was alone. I don’t in the least remember what she wore. She was very tall and very slim, and I am sure she was very young, for she wore her hair in two great plaits down her back. Her hair was dark-brown, and her eyes were exactly the same colour. She had a face with a pale, creamy complexion, and when she smiled she showed two rows of little even teeth, white as pearls.

“Dear Miss Donnithorne,” she said. “And is this Dumps?”

I could not feel indignant, even though I resented being called Dumps by a total stranger, for Hermione’s eyes had a sort of pleading expression in them, and she seemed sorry the moment she had said the word.

“Of course I ought to call you Miss Grant,” she said.

“No, no,” I answered; “I am Rachel Grant. Nobody in all the world ever yet called me Miss Grant.”

“Is the carriage waiting, Hermione?” said Miss Donnithorne. “It is cold here in the porch.”

“Yes,” replied Hermione. “And father and mother have not come. Father would have had to walk back, for we could not all go in the carriage, and so mother decided to stay with him. Father has a cough – not much – nothing to speak of.”

“Come then, dear, we will go at once,” said Miss Donnithorne.

She got into the carriage first; then I was desired to step in, and notwithstanding my smart dress, I am afraid I was very awkward as I got into that carriage. Miss Donnithorne and I had the seat facing the horses, and Hermione sat opposite to us. It seemed to me as though we flew over the country; the whole feeling was too delicious – the softly padded cushions, the rhythmic beat of the horses’ feet. The girl who was not fortunate enough to possess a father like Professor Grant had some compensations! Such a carriage! Such a nice face! The girl herself impressed me in the most marvellous way. As to the dreadful Swans, I am afraid I gave them anything but kind thoughts at that moment.

By-and-by we got to the house. Then Hermione took possession of me.

“You are my guest,” she said. “Come up and I’ll show you my room.”

We ran upstairs together. I was feeling so very good that I did not think for a moment that anything but good could befall me during that delightful visit. Hermione took me first to her bedroom, and then into a little sitting-room which opened out of it.

“I do my lessons here,” she said, “and read here, and entertain my friends. I haven’t many friends. I cannot tell you how interested I was at the thought of your coming to-day.”

“Were you indeed?” I answered.

I wondered what she would have thought if I had come to visit her in the brown skirt and red blouse.

“You must take off your pretty jacket,” she said.

“What a sweet frock that is! In what shop did you buy it?”

“I didn’t buy it at all,” I said.

I felt my cheeks crimsoning. There was a kind of naughty pride in me that would not tell her the truth that Miss Donnithorne had given it to me.

“I suppose your governess, or whoever takes care of you, arranges your clothes,” said Hermione in a careless tone. “Well, it is sweetly pretty, and so becoming! And what nice hair you have!”

“Nice hair?” I responded.

“Why, of course it is nice; it is so thick and such a good colour. It will look very handsome when you have it arranged in the grown-up style.”

“I don’t want to be grown-up,” I said. “I’d like to be a child always – that is, if I could have birthdays all the same.”

“Do you think so much of your birthdays?” said Hermione, leaning up against the window-sill as she spoke, and twiddling with a paper-knife. “I think they’re rather tiresome. I think birthdays are overdone.”

“You wouldn’t if you knew what my birthday was like,” I said.

“Oh, then,” she exclaimed, “you must tell me all about it.”

I was just about to explain, wondering if I could get her to see the vivid picture of the bright day, the presents, the anxious little girl, whose heart had been aching for so many long months just because of this glorious time, when a great gong sounded through the house, and Hermione said, “Oh! we can’t talk at present; it is dinner-time. Come along, Rachel; come downstairs.”