The feathers that had shocked her mother, partly, perhaps, because of the contrast between their richness and Laura’s plain little hat of white chip with its pink ribbon tied round in a bow to match her pink frock, were long white ostrich plumes wreathed round floppy leghorn hats. The hats were exactly alike and the feathers of the same fullness down to the last strand. The white embroidered muslin dresses they wore were also replicas of each other, for it was the fashion then to dress sisters alike, regardless of type. But the girls had seen them and came running towards the spring cart with a twinkle of long, black-stockinged legs and shiny patent-leather best shoes. After the health of themselves, their parents, and the rest of the family had been inquired into, they came round to the back of the cart.

“So this is Laura? And this is dear little Edmund? How do you do? How do you do, dear?” Alma was twelve and Ethel thirteen, but their cool, grown-up manner might have belonged to twenty-five and thirty. Laura began to wish herself back at home as, one blush of embarrassment all over, she answered for herself and Edmund. She could scarcely believe that these two tall, well-dressed, nearly grown-up girls were her cousins. She had expected something quite different.

However, things were easier when their equipage moved on, with Ethel and Alma holding on, one on each side of the tail board, and smiling a little as they answered their uncle’s shouted questions. “Yes, Uncle,” Alma was still at the Candleford school; but Ethel was at Miss Bussell’s, a weekly boarder; she came home on Friday night and went back on Monday morning. She was going to stay there until she was old enough to go to the Training College for Schoolteachers. “That’s right!” called Laura’s father. “Stuff your own brains now and you’ll be able to stuff other people’s hereafter. And Alma, is she going to be a teacher, too?” Oh, no, when she left school she was going to be apprenticed to a Court dressmaker in Oxford. “That’s first-rate,” said their uncle. “Then when Laura is presented at Court she’ll be able to make her dress for her.” The girls laughed uncertainly, as if they were not sure if that was meant for a joke or not, and his wife told him not to be “a great donkey”, but Laura felt uncomfortable. The only Court she had heard of was the County Court, to which a neighbour had recently been summoned, and the idea of being presented there was far from pleasant.