"It is a sad thing," Mr. Graham would say, when his wife fluttered in
to lunch, breathless and exhausted and half an hour late (she, the most
punctual of women!),--"it is a sad thing to have married a comet by
mistake, thinking it was a woman. How did you find the other planets
this morning, my dear? Is it true that Saturn has lost one of his rings?
and has the Sun recovered from his last attack of spots? I really fear,"
he would add, turning to Hilda, "that this preternatural activity in
your comet-parent portends some alarming change in the--a--atmospheric
phenomena, my child. I would have you on your guard!" and then he would
look at her and sigh, shake his head, and apply himself to the cold
chicken with melancholy vigor.
Hilda thought nothing of her father's remarks,--papa was always talking
nonsense, and she thought she always understood him perfectly. It did
occur to her, however, to wonder at her mother's leaving her out on all
her shopping expeditions. Hilda rather prided herself on her skill in
matching shades and selecting fabrics, and mamma was generally glad of
her assistance in all such matters. However, perhaps it was only
under-clothing and house-linen, and such things that she was buying. All
that was the prosy part of shopping. It was the poetry of it that Hilda
loved,--the shimmer of silk and satin, the rich shadows in velvet, the
cool, airy fluttering of lawn and muslin and lace. So the girl went on
her usual way, finding life a little dull, a little tiresome, and most
people rather stupid, but everything on the whole much as usual, if her
head only would not ache so; and it was without a shadow of suspicion
that she obeyed one morning her mother's summons to come and see her in
her dressing-room.
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