Let me cool it."
She dipped a towel in water, and pressed it on the hot and helpless head
which Mrs. Wragge submitted to her with the docility of a sick child.
"What a pretty hand you've got!" said the poor creature, feeling the
relief of the coolness and taking Magdalen's hand, admiringly, in her
own. "How soft and white it is! I try to be a lady; I always keep my
gloves on--but I can't get my hands like yours. I'm nicely dressed,
though, ain't I? I like dress; it's a comfort to me. I'm always happy
when I'm looking at my things. I say--you won't be angry with me?--I
should so like to try your bonnet on."
Magdalen humored her, with the ready compassion of the young. She stood
smiling and nodding at herself in the glass, with the bonnet perched
on the top of her head. "I had one as pretty as this, once," she
said--"only it was white, not black. I wore it when the captain married
me."
"Where did you meet with him?" asked Magdalen, putting the question as
a chance means of increasing her scanty stock of information on the
subject of Captain Wragge.
"At the Dining-rooms," said Mrs. Wragge. "He was the hungriest and the
loudest to wait upon of the lot of 'em.
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