structure on the head. The Carminster hairdresser had been making his
rounds since daylight, taking his most distinguished customers last;
and as the Misses Delavie were not high on the roll, Harriet and
Aurelia had been under his hands at nine A.M. From that time till
three, when the coach called for them, they had sat captive on low
stools under a tent of table-cloth over tall chair-backs to keep the
dust out of the frosted edifice constructed out of their rich dark
hair, of the peculiar tint then called mouse-colour. Betty had
refused to submit to this durance. "What sort of dinner would be
on my father's table-cloth if I were to sit under one all day?" said
she in answer to Harriet's representation of the fitness of things.
"La, my dear, what matters it what an old scarecrow like me puts on?"

Old maidenhood set in much earlier in those days than at present; the
sisters acquiesced, and Betty had run about as usual all the morning
in her mob-cap, and chintz gown tucked through her pocket-holes, and
only at the last submitted her head to the manipulations of Corporal
Palmer, who daily powdered his master's wig.

Strange and unnatural as was the whitening of the hair, it was
effective in enhancing the beauty of Aurelia's dark arched brows,
the soft brilliance of her large velvety brown eyes, and the exquisite
carnation and white of her colouring. Her features were delicately
chiselled, and her face had that peculiar fresh, innocent, soft,
untouched bloom and undisturbed repose which form the special charm
and glory of the first dawn of womanhood. Her little head was well
poised on a slender neck, just now curving a little to one side with
the fatigue of the hours during which it had sustained her headgear.
This consisted of a tiny flat hat, fastened on by long pins, and
adorned by a cluster of campanulas like those on her dress, with a