Mrs. Buncher had made an effort to brighten up her dingy parlor since her new lodgers took possession of it. She had washed the windows and put up clean muslin curtains, and a white towel on the small table, which was further ornamented by a bowl of lovely roses, which filled the room with perfume and seemed to harmonize so perfectly with the fair young girl sitting near the table and darning what would soon have been a hole in the elbow of her father's coat. She had discovered it that morning, and as soon as Neil left her sat down to her task, with her pretty white apron partially covering her linen dress and greatly improving her appearance. Bessie always wore aprons in the morning at home, though Neil had more than once objected to it, as he said such things belonged to housemaids and not to ladies.
"And I am the housemaid; I wash the dishes and lay the cloth and sweep and dust, and an apron keeps my dress clean," Bessie had answered him, laughingly, and when she came to London she brought her best apron with her, and after Neil was gone put it on and commenced her task of darning.
"Oh, if you could have a new coat; this is so worn and threadbare," she said to her father, who was sitting near her in his dressing-gown. "I wish Neil had sent you a coat instead of that dress to me. I do wish we were rich! I would buy a lot of things, but first of all I would have a drive in the park. Wasn't it grand! I wish Neil would take us, though perhaps he has not the money of his own to pay for the carriage."
"Bessie," her father said, rousing up from the half dozing condition in which he was most of the time when in the house, "you are hugging a delusion with regard to Neil. He is very kind in a way, when it costs him nothing, but he would never sacrifice his comfort or his feelings for you or me. We are his poor relations, from the country; we are not like his world, or that powdered piece of vanity who was with him yesterday. It would cost him nothing to take us for a drive, for the carriage is his mother's, but you couldn't hire him to go round that park with us; he has that false pride, more common in women than in men, which would keep him from it. He likes you very much--at Stoneleigh, where there are none of his set to look on; but here in London it is different. He might take us to many places, if he would; but he dares not, lest he should be seen. He can send you a blue silk dress, which I half wish you had returned; and he can come here and make your pulse beat faster with his soft words and manner, which mean so little; but other attentions we must not expect from him. I tell you this, my child, because you are getting to be a woman. You were fifteen last March. You are very beautiful, and Neil McPherson knows it, and if you had a fortune he might seek to be more than your cousin; but as it is, don't attach much importance to what he says and does, or be disappointed at what he does not do."