CHAPTER I
THE DAWN OF A GALA DAY
To begin with the old rigmarole of childhood. In a country
there was a shire, and in that shire there was a town, and
in that town there was a house, and in that house there
was a room, and in that room there was a bed, and in that bed
there lay a little girl; wide awake and longing to get up, but not
daring to do so for fear of the unseen power in the next room—a
certain Betty, whose slumbers must not be disturbed until six
o’clock struck, when she wakened of herself ‘as sure as clockwork’,
and left the household very little peace afterwards. It was a June
morning, and early as it was, the room was full of sunny warmth
and light.
On the drawers opposite to the little white dimity bed in which
Molly Gibson lay, was a primitive kind of bonnet-stand on which
was hung a bonnet, carefully covered over from any chance of
dust, with a large cotton handkerchief, of so heavy and serviceable
a texture that if the thing underneath it had been a flimsy fabric of
gauze and lace and flowers, it would have been altogether
‘scromfished’ (again to quote from Betty’s vocabulary). But the
bonnet was made of solid straw, and its only trimming was a plain
white ribbon put over the crown, and forming the strings. Still,
there was a neat little quilling inside, every plait of which Molly
knew, for had she not made it herself the evening before, with
infinite pains? and was there not a little blue bow in this quilling,
the very first bit of such finery Molly had ever had the prospect of