Chapter 30

"Here's news, girls; we are going back to Maine!" and Georgie rushed into the sitting-room where his sisters and their girl friends were chatting together. "Papa says we are going back _for sure_, in just a few weeks, too! Isn't that jolly?" and he manifested his delight in a series of handsprings that would have charmed the heart of an acrobat.

"Yes, I heard something of it, but hoped it would not come to pass," said Dexie.

"It is the best news I've heard for a long time, the sooner we leave this horrid place the better I'll be pleased," was Gussie's comment.

Elsie was quite depressed at the thought of parting from her friends; but the intervening weeks were full of pleasure and excitement, and drives and parties seemed to follow one another in quick succession.

One day Dexie came in from a shopping expedition in great excitement, saying:

"Oh, girls, I have met my double; met her down in a store on Granville Street, and I actually followed her until she entered a house on Spring Garden Road. If she had worn one of my suits, I should have expected her to walk home instead of me. I began to think 'this could not be I.' Whom do you think she can be?"

Nobody knew; but a few days after, Lancy related the fact that he had hurried after a lady, supposing her to be Dexie, and found he had been following a stranger.

"I am going to find out who this young person is," said Dexie, laughing. "Who knows, perhaps it is my only chance to 'see myself as others see me.'"

After a few inquiries, it was found that Dexie's double was a Nina Gordon, only daughter of a widow lately arrived in Halifax, and residing with a bachelor brother who was travelling for a city firm.

Cora Gurney happened to meet both mother and daughter while making a round of calls with a friend, and she ran in to tell Dexie of the meeting.

"Your double is not very much like you after all, Dexie," she said. "Her figure and style of walking are remarkably like yours, even to the poise of her head; her hair, too, is almost the same shade; the eyes and upper part of the face are similar: but the mouth and chin are her own--they have no resemblance whatever to the true Dexie. It is the first sight that strikes one. When you look for the resemblance, it really seems slight enough, and when she begins to talk, my! the illusion vanishes at once, for really I do not think I ever met a person who irritated me as she did. She is a girl after the 'china doll' pattern, and can only use her brains at the direction of her mother. I do not think she ventured a remark of her own all the time I was there."

"Perhaps she did not have the chance," said Dexie, eager to champion the cause of her double. "Some girls are not allowed to have an opinion apart from the maternal idea of the fitness of things, and are kept down."

"Nonsense! If you had heard her talking, Dexie, I'm sure you would have felt like shaking her. It is only when her face is in repose that she resembles you in the least, for the moment she begins to talk, or even listen--or try to listen, one might say--she has the most senseless expression I ever saw on a woman's face."

"Goodness sake! bring me a looking-glass, quick! do, till I see what I look like when I talk. Does my face assume an idiotic expression when I am conversing? Be honest and tell me, for sweet charity's sake."

"Ease your mind, Dexie," said Cora, laughing. "Did I not say that there the resemblance ends? It is only when her face is at rest that the likeness can be seen at all. If you ask her the simplest question, she must refer to her mother for advice before she replies. For instance, I asked her if she liked Halifax. 'Do I like Halifax, mamma, do you think?' and she turned to her mother with such an affected simper. Really, I almost disliked her the moment she opened her mouth."

"I hope I shall get a chance to see her before we leave Halifax," said Dexie.

"Well, I asked her and her mother to call on mamma next week, almost on purpose for your benefit. Hugh is getting along so well I think mamma can receive some friends. I will let you know when they come."

A further acquaintance corroborated Cora's idea of Nina Gordon's brains. She seemed to have no mind of her own; a good thing, perhaps, in some cases, but a more spiritless person to talk to never vexed the heart of man or woman either. She had no answer for the simplest question without first asking it from her mother, and away from her mother's side she was uneasy and almost dumb.

The mother's idiosyncrasy was always to do "the correct thing." The fear of not doing it, or the dread of having done it unknowingly, was constantly before her--the bugbear that troubled her daily. Perhaps the daughter inherited the mother's dread, and her fear of doing or saying something that was not just "the correct thing" made her put all the responsibility of conversation on her mother's shoulder. Dexie was amused, as well as provoked, as she listened to the efforts at conversation which Cora vainly endeavored to sustain with her double, and it was evident that Mrs. Gurney also was surprised as well as amused at Mrs. Gordon's remarks.

"However do you manage with such a large family, Mrs. Gurney?" she was saying. "Why, with only Nina I am wearied to death; for from the time she wakes up I must see to everything for her until she goes to bed again at night. How you manage it for so many, I can't see, I am sure. I should die of fatigue."

"Oh! the children soon get big enough to help themselves, and the younger ones, too," Mrs. Gurney replied, with a smile. "I seldom see my girls in the morning until I meet them at the breakfast table."

"Is it possible! Do you not have to superintend their dressing?" she asked, in surprise.

"Why, no, Mrs. Gordon! Girls of that age," waving her hand toward the group by the window, "are supposed to have judgment of their own in such things, and with some to spare for the little ones."

"Dear me! I should be so afraid they would not do the correct thing if I was not by."

"Perhaps you are by when she ought to rely on herself," was the smiling answer. "My girls are relieving me of much of the burden of household cares."

"Well, well!" and Mrs. Gordon looked across at the girls in surprise. "I wonder you are not in constant dread that some of them might not do the correct thing when you are not near with your instructions. How wonderful that you can trust them alone so much! Nina seems a child in comparison."

Dexie was mentally comparing Nina to a big, useless doll; for she had to conclude that Nina cared for nothing but "to be dressed up and wait in the parlor for callers."

The girls coaxed Nina away from her mother's side while the latter was talking to Mrs. Gurney; but directly she was asked a question she wanted to rush back to her mother, and see how she should answer it.

"But don't you know yourself whether you like music or not?" Dexie asked her, as Nina vainly endeavored to catch her mother's eye. "Do you not play or sing, Miss Gordon?"

Nina picked at her gloves in embarrassment as she replied, with a simper:

"Well, I play scales on the piano sometimes."

"Then you _are_ fond of music, I suppose," said Cora, pleasantly.

"Well, I think I am. I will ask mamma; she knows if I like it. Is it quite correct to like music, do you think?"

The silly look which accompanied this speech made Dexie almost disgusted with her, but she turned to Cora and smiled significantly.

"Well," said Dexie, when her double had taken her departure, "she has tired me out; but with that chin what can anyone expect? It tells her character at a glance."

"Tell us your opinion of her," said Cora. "Do _you_ see the great difference there is between you?"

"Why, she is different every way. First in importance is temper; there she has the best of me, for she is as mild as milk-and-water, and I own it certainly is not the 'correct thing' to get into such rages as I do. She gives the impression that she is never determined about anything, and anyone can persuade her that this, or that is right, as she has no mind to solve the matter for herself. She will go through life depending on another's conscience to keep her straight; but with that chin what else could she do?"

"What does her chin say?" said Cora, smiling.

"'Unstable as water; unstable as water.' I saw the words every time I glanced at her."

For the next few days Dexie endured much teasing about her intelligent _double_; but she bore it all so good-naturedly that it soon died away.

Much to everyone's surprise, Dexie endeavored to see Nina frequently, and tried to induce her to visit them often; and Dexie laughingly gave as her reason that she would like to knock a little common-sense into her _double_ before she left Halifax, for fear people might think that Nina was her exact counterpart in everything.