L. Meade - Dumps – A Plain Girl

We were taken into a special department where all sorts of dresses were to be found. Now, I had my own ideas about clothes, which by-and-by would turn out quite right and satisfactory; but father’s ideas were too primitive for anything. He disliked my interfering; he would not consult me. In the end I was furbished up with a long brown skirt which reached to my feet, and a dark-red blouse. My father bought these garments because he said they felt weighty and would keep out the cold. He desired them to be packed in brown-paper, paid for them, and gave me the parcel to carry.

I felt a sense of absolute misery as I walked home with my hideous brown skirt and that dreadful red blouse. It was of a dark brick-red colour, and would not suit me; I knew that quite well. Still, father was highly pleased.

“There, now,” he said, “you won’t go to Miss Grace Donnithorne’s looking shabby. But, good gracious me! I’m five minutes late for class. Good-night, Dumps.”

“Won’t you be in to dinner, father?” I asked.

“I don’t know – don’t expect to. Now, not another word, or I shall have one of my furious headaches. Good-night, my dear.”

He banged the hall door, and I sat down with the brown-paper parcel in front of me.

Father was really quite interested about my wardrobe. He asked me two or three questions during the few days which ensued between Wednesday and Saturday, and in particular said what good weight the brown skirt was, and what an age it would last me.

“But it’s just a wee bit too long for me,” I could not help remarking.

He raised his brows very high when I said this, and pushed his glasses up on his forehead. Then he said after a pause, “There’s no pleasing some people. Didn’t you tell me that you had outgrown your clothes, and wasn’t I once and for all going to put a stop to that sort of thing? Do you suppose that a man who is saving his money to send his sons to Oxford or Cambridge can afford to buy dresses often? That skirt leaves room for growth, and as it thins off with age it will be less heavy. It’s exactly the sort you ought to have, Dumps, and I won’t hear a word against it.”

“Of course not, father. It was very kind of you to buy it for me.”

“Perhaps you’d best travel in it,” he said.

But to this I objected, on the score that it might get injured in the train.

“Very true,” he remarked. “But, all the same, I should like Miss Donnithorne to see you looking nice. Well, you can put it on when you get there. Be sure you do that. Go straight up to your room and put on your brown skirt and your red blouse, and go down to her looking as my daughter ought to look.”

“Yes, father,” I said meekly.

The joyful day arrived. Father could not take me to the station himself; but Hannah and I went there in a cab. Hannah was terribly cross. She said she knew I’d come home “that spoilt as would be past bearing.”

“You’re going to that fat, vulgar body,” she said. “Oh, don’t you talk to me about it’s being genteel to put on flesh, for I know better. But, anyhow, you’ll be a good riddance while you are away, Dumps. I’ll have time to give the parlour a rare good turning out.”

“Oh Hannah,” I said, nestling up a little closer to her in the cab, “aren’t you ever a little bit sorry that I’m going away?”

“Well, to be sure, child,” she said, her eyes twinkling, “I’ve no fault to find with you. You can’t help your looks, and you can’t help your aggrawating manners, and you can’t help your perverse ways of going on. But there, there! you’re as you’re made, and I’ve no fault to find with you.”

This was a great deal from Hannah, and I was obliged to be satisfied with it.

“I don’t think I shall ever grow up vain,” I thought, “and I suppose I ought to be satisfied.”

By-and-by I was cosily travelling first-class, for father was peremptory on this point, down to Chelmsford. I had left smoky London behind me, and was in the country. It was very cold in the country; snow was over everything, and the whole place looked so white and so sweet, and I just pined for a breath of the fresh country air. So I flung open the window of the carriage nearest to me and poked out my head.

A poke of another sort was presently administered somewhere in my back, and turning, I saw a most irate old gentleman who had been sitting at the other end of the carriage.

“I’ll thank you, young person,” he said, “to shut that window without a moment’s delay. You must be mad to put your head out like that in such bitter weather. I’m certain to be attacked by bronchitis with your wilful and violent way of letting such extreme cold into the carriage.”

I shut the window in a great hurry and sat down, very red in the face. The old gentleman did not take any further notice of me; he buried himself behind his paper. After a minute or two I heard him sneeze, and when he sneezed he gave me a very angry glance. Then he coughed, and then he sneezed again; finally he buried himself once more in his paper.

By-and-by we got to Chelmsford. It was nice to see Miss Grace Donnithorne standing on the platform. She was so round and so jolly and good-natured-looking, and her eyes, which were like little black beads in the middle of her face, quite shone with happiness.

“There you are, you poor Dumps!” she said. “Hop out, dear – hop out.”

I sprang from the carriage to the platform.

“Where is your luggage, my dear?”

“I have it,” I said; “it is in a brown-paper parcel on the luggage-rack.”

I thought I heard Miss Donnithorne murmur some thing; but all she said was, “Give it to me, dear. Be quick, or the train will move on.”

So I lugged it out as best I could, and there I stood in my shabby grey tweed dress, with my little worn-out jacket and my small hat, clutching at the brown-paper parcel. It was fairly heavy, for I had had to put other things into it besides the now dress and the new jacket; but it was tied very securely with cord, and addressed in my father’s handwriting with my name to the care of Miss Grace Donnithorne, Hedgerow House.

“Now then, child,” said Miss Grace, “we’ll get into my pony-trap and drive home. Why, you poor thing, you’re as cold as charity; and no wonder – no wonder.”

She insisted on carrying the brown-paper parcel herself. Waiting outside the station was a very neat little cart drawn by a shaggy pony. There was a boy standing by the pony’s head. He was dressed in quite a smart sort of dress, which I afterwards discovered was called livery. He sprang forward when he saw Miss Donnithorne and took the parcel, which she told him to put carefully in the back of the carriage, and on no account to trample on it with his feet.

Then we both got in, and a great fur rug was wrapped round us, and a cloak of Miss Donnithorne’s fastened round my neck.

“Now you can’t possibly catch cold,” she said. – “Jump up behind, Jim.”

Jim obeyed. Miss Donnithorne took the reins, and off we flew.

Oh, how wonderful, how delightful was the sensation!

We got to the cottage in about a quarter of an hour. Miss Grace told me that although it was called Hedgerow House, it was really only a cottage; but I could not tell what the difference was. It was a long, low, rambling sort of house, all built in one floor. The walls were so completely covered with creepers that, even though it was winter, you could not see much of the original stone-work; and where there were no creepers in full leaf there was trellis-work, which was covered with the bare branches of what in summer, Miss Donnithorne told me, would be roses.

“Do roses really grow like that?” I asked.