I have never written very much about mother, but she is as much the life of her children as the air they breathe; whoever or whatever we love we always place them "after mother." As I give her a hearty hug, I become aware of a pleased smile on her face, that not only lurks in every pretty corner, but covers it as with a garment in a most unequivocal manner.
"Jack," I say, with a sudden leap of joy through my veins," he is coming home?"
"No," says mother, "it is not Jack. It is an invitation."
"An invitation!" I repeat. "Are any of our neighbours mad enough, or forgiving enough, to try that on again?"
"It is from Milly. She wants you to go on the 30th to stay with her for a month."
"Lovely!" I say, with a deep gasp; "but he will not let me go."
"It is just possible that he may," says mother, "although he has refused all Alice's invitations for you. You would like it, dear?"
"Like it," I say, sighing; "did not the country mouse love to go and stay with the town one, even though he came to terrible grief? But mother, mother, I have no clothes. Running wild here is one thing, but footing it at Luttrell another."
"What have you got?" asks mother, setting down her darling, who speedily accomplishes his one object in life, which is to overturn himself.
"One black silk, which is skimpy and rusty, and tight and green; two decent white dresses, and one indecent one; a few prints that look passable enough in the dim vista of a woodland, but are not quite, ahem! the thing for visiting. Have you got anything at all left in the wardrobe?"
Mother's wardrobe is a kind of museum of dead and gone fashions and garments, among which she always rummages when
