Chapter 19

CHAPTER XIX - ANGEL VISITS

'As angels in some brighter dreams

Call to the soul when man doth sleep,

So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes,

And into glory peep.'

HENRY VAUGHAN.

Mrs. Hale was curiously amused and interested by the idea of the
Thornton dinner party. She kept wondering about the details, with
something of the simplicity of a little child, who wants to have
all its anticipated pleasures described beforehand. But the
monotonous life led by invalids often makes them like children,
inasmuch as they have neither of them any sense of proportion in
events, and seem each to believe that the walls and curtains
which shut in their world, and shut out everything else, must of
necessity be larger than anything hidden beyond. Besides, Mrs.
Hale had had her vanities as a girl; had perhaps unduly felt
their mortification when she became a poor clergyman's
wife;--they had been smothered and kept down; but they were not
extinct; and she liked to think of seeing Margaret dressed for a
party, and discussed what she should wear, with an unsettled
anxiety that amused Margaret, who had been more accustomed to
society in her one in Harley Street than her mother in five and
twenty years of Helstone.

'Then you think you shall wear your white silk. Are you sure it
will fit? It's nearly a year since Edith was married!'

'Oh yes, mamma! Mrs. Murray made it, and it's sure to be right;
it may be a straw's breadth shorter or longer-waisted, according
to my having grown fat or thin. But I don't think I've altered in
the least.'

'Hadn't you better let Dixon see it? It may have gone yellow with
lying by.'

'If you like, mamma. But if the worst comes to the worst, I've a
very nice pink gauze which aunt Shaw gave me, only two or three
months before Edith was married. That can't have gone yellow.'

'No! but it may have faded.'

'Well! then I've a green silk. I feel more as if it was the
embarrassment of riches.'

'I wish I knew what you ought to wear,' said Mrs. Hale,
nervously. Margaret's manner changed instantly. 'Shall I go and
put them on one after another, mamma, and then you could see
which you liked best?'

'But--yes! perhaps that will be best.'

So off Margaret went. She was very much inclined to play some
pranks when she was dressed up at such an unusual hour; to make
her rich white silk balloon out into a cheese, to retreat
backwards from her mother as if she were the queen; but when she
found that these freaks of hers were regarded as interruptions to
the serious business, and as such annoyed her mother, she became
grave and sedate. What had possessed the world (her world) to
fidget so