As she took the matter in this serious way, it will be understood that the question of dress was not a mere frivolity with her. A week before the ball she stood in front of the large glass in her mother’s room, contemplating herself, not with that satisfaction which it is generally supposed a pretty young woman has in contemplating her own image. She was decidedly a pretty young woman. She had a great deal of the hair of the period, nature in her case, as (curiously, yet very truly) in so many others, having lent herself to the prevailing fashion. How it comes about I cannot tell, but it is certain that there does exist at this present moment, a proportion of golden-haired girls which very much exceeds the number we used to see when golden hair had not become fashionable—a freak of nature which is altogether independent of dyes and auriferous fluid, and which probably has influenced fashion unawares. To be sure the pomades of twenty years ago are, Heaven be praised! unknown to this generation, and washing also has become the fashion, which accounts for something. Anyhow, Phoebe, junior, possessed in perfection the hair of the period. She had, too, the complexion which goes naturally with those sunny locks—a warm pink and white, which, had the boundaries between the pink and the white been a little more distinct, would have approached perfection too. This was what she was thinking when she looked at herself in her mother’s great glass. Mrs. Beecham stood behind her, more full-blown and more highly-coloured than she, but very evidently the rose to which this bud would come in time. Phoebe looked at her own reflection, and then at her mother’s, and sighed such a profound sigh as only lungs in the most excellent condition could produce.
“Mamma,” she said, with an accent of despair, “I am too pink, a great deal too pink! What am I to do?”
“Nonsense, my pet,” said Mrs. Beecham; “you have a lovely complexion;” and she threw a quantity of green ribbons which lay by over her child’s hair and shoulders. A cloud crossed the blooming countenance of Phoebe, junior. She disembarrassed herself of the ribbons with another sigh.
“Dear mamma,” she said, “I wish you would let me read with you now and then, about the theory of colours, for instance. Green is the complementary of red. If you want to bring out my pink and make it more conspicuous than ever, of course you will put me in a green dress. No, mamma, dear, not that—I should look a fright; and though I dare say it does not matter much, I object to looking a fright. Women are, I suppose, more ornamental than men, or, at least, everybody says so; and in that case it is our duty to keep it up.”
“You are a funny girl, with your theories of colour,” said Mrs. Beecham. “In my time, fair girls wore greens and blues, and dark girls wore reds and yellows. It was quite simple. Have a white tarlatan, then; every girl looks well in that.”
“You don’t see, mamma,” said Phoebe, softly, suppressing in the most admirable manner the delicate trouble of not being understood, “that a thing every girl looks well in, is just the sort of thing that no one looks very well in. White shows no invention. It is as if one took no trouble about one’s dress.”
“And neither one ought, Phoebe,” said her mother. “That is very true. It is sinful to waste time thinking of colours and ribbons, when we might be occupied about much more important matters.”
“That is not my opinion at all,” said Phoebe. “I should like people to think I had taken a great deal of trouble. Think of all the trouble that has to be taken to get up this ball!”
“I fear so, indeed; and a great deal of expense,” said Mrs. Beecham, shaking her head. “Yes, when one comes to think of that. But then, you see, wealth has its duties. I don’t defend Mr. Copperhead—”
“I don’t think he wants to be defended, mamma. I think it is all nonsense about wasting time. What I incline to, if you won’t be shocked, is black.”
“Black!” The suggestion took away Mrs. Beecham’s breath. “As if you were fifty! Why, I don’t consider myself old enough for black.”
“It is a pity,” said Phoebe, with a glance at her mother’s full colours; but that was really of so much less importance. “Black would throw me up,” she added seriously, turning to the glass. “It would take off this pink look. I don’t mind it in the cheeks, but I am pink all over; my white is pink. Black would be a great deal the best for both of us. It would tone us down,” said Phoebe, decisively, “and it would throw us up.”
“But for you, a girl under twenty, my dear—”
“Mamma, what does it matter? The question is, am I to look my best? which I think is my duty to you and to Providence; or am I just,” said Phoebe, with indignation, “to look a little insipidity—a creature with no character—a little girl like everybody else?”
The consequence of this solemn appeal was that both the Phoebes went to Mr. Copperhead’s ball in black; the elder in velvet, with Honiton lace (point, which Phoebe,
