Outside, things were no better; the very tram-conductors were fascinated by it; and every passerby was a fresh object of dread: Laura waited, her heart a-thump, for the moment when he should raise his eyes and, with a start of attention, become aware of the screaming colour. At Godmother’s all the faces disapproved: Georgina said, “What a guy!” when she thought Laura was out of earshot; but the boys stated their opinion openly as soon as they had her to themselves.
“Oh, golly! Like a parrot—ain’t she?”
“This way to the purple parrot—this way! Step up, ladies and gentlemen! A penny the whole show!”
That evening, she tore the dress from her back and, hanging it up inside the cloak, vowed that, come what might, she would never put it on again. A day or two later, on unexpectedly entering her bedroom, she found Lilith Gordon and another girl at her wardrobe. They grew very red, and hurried giggling from the room, but Laura had seen what they were looking at. After this, she tied the dress up with string and brown paper and hid it in a drawer, under her nightgowns. When she went home at Christmas it went with her, still in the parcel, and then there was a stormy scene. But Laura was stubborn: rather than wear the dress, she would not go back to the College at all. Mother’s heart had been softened by the prizes; Laura seized the occasion, and extracted a promise that she should be allowed in future to choose her own frocks. And so the purple dress was passed on to Pin, who detested it with equal heartiness, but, living under Mother’s eye, had not the spirit to fight against it.
“Got anything new in the way of clothes?” asked Lilith Gordon as she and Laura undressed for bed a night or two after their return.
“Yes, one,” said Laura shortly. For she thought Lilith winked at the third girl, a publican’s daughter from Clunes.
“Another like the last? Or have you gone in for yellow ochre this time?”
Laura flamed in silence.
“Great Scott, what a colour that was! Fit for an Easter Fair—Miss Day said so.”
“It wasn’t mine,” retorted Laura passionately. “It … it belonged to a girl I knew who died—and her mother gave it to me as a remembrance of her—but I didn’t care for it.”
“I shouldn’t think you did. But I say, does your mother let you wear other people’s clothes? What a rummy thing to do!”
She went out of the room—no doubt to spread this piece of gossip further. Laura looked daggers after her. She was angry enough with Lilith for having goaded her to the lie, but much angrier with herself for its blundering ineffectualness. It was not likely she had been believed, and if she were, well, it made matters worse instead of better: people would conclude that she lived on charity. Always when unexpectedly required to stand on the defensive, she said or did something foolish. That morning, for instance, a similar thing had happened—it had rankled all day in her mind. On looking through the washing, Miss Day had exclaimed in horror at the way in which her stockings were mended.
“Whoever did it? They’ve been done since you left here. I would never have passed such dams.”
Laura crimsoned. “Those? Oh, an old nurse we’ve got at home. We’ve had her for years and years—but her eyesight’s going now.”
Miss Day sniffed audibly. “So I should think. To cobble like that!”
They were Mother’s dams, hastily made, late at night, and with all Mother’s genial impatience at useful sewing as opposed to beautiful. Laura’s intention had been to shield Mother from criticism, as well as to spare Miss Day’s feelings. But to have done it so clumsily as this! To have had to wince under Miss Day’s scepticism! It was only a wonder the governess had not there and then taxed her with the fib. For who believed in old nurses nowadays? They were a stock property, borrowed on the spur of the moment from readings in The Family Herald, from Tennyson’s “Lady Clare.” Why on earth had such a farfetched excuse leapt to her tongue? Why could she not have said Sarah, the servant, the maid-of-all-work? Then Miss Day would have had no chance to sniff, and she, Laura, could have believed herself believed, instead of having to fret over her own stupidity. But what she would like more than anything to know was, why the mending of the stockings at home should not be Sarah’s work? Why must it just be Mother—her mother alone—who made herself so disagreeably conspicuous, and not merely by darning the stockings, but, what was a still greater grievance, by not even darning them well?
XI
It was an odd thing, all the same, how easy it was to be friends with Lilith Gordon: though she did not belong to Laura’s set, though Laura did not even like her, and though she had had ample proof that Lilith was double-faced, not to be trusted. Yet, in the months that followed the affair of the purple dress, Laura grew more intimate with the plump, sandy-haired girl than with either Bertha, or Inez, or Tilly. Or, to put it more exactly, she was continually having lapses into intimacy, and repenting them when it was too late. In one way Lilith was responsible for this: she could make herself very pleasant when she chose, seem to be your friend through thick and thin, thus luring you on to unbosom yourself; and afterwards she would go away and laugh over what you had told her, with other girls. And Laura was peculiarly helpless under such circumstances: if it was done with tact, and with a certain assumed warmth of manner, anyone could make a cat’s-paw
