Lor' ma, look at her, she's the color of a peony." [It may be remarked in passing that the Bells did not echo one another when at home.] "Never mind, never mind," retorted Mrs.Bell, who, with true delicacy, would not look at her blushing daughter.
"I was thinking Matty, my love, that you wanted a new evening dress.

I don't like you to be behind any one else, my dear, and that green skirt with the white jacket, though genteel enough, doesn't seem quite the thing.

I can't tell what's the matter with it, for the mohair in the skirts cost nine-pence half-penny a yard, and the first day you wore those dresses, girls, they shone as if they were silk, and your father asked me why I was so extravagant, and said that though he would like it he hadn't money to dress you up in silk attire.

Poor Bell has a turn for poetry, and if he had not lost his money through the badness of the coal trade, he'd make you look like _three poems_, that's what he said to me.

Well, well, somehow the dresses are handsome, and yet I don't like them." "They're hideous," said Matty, kicking out her foot with a petulant movement.