'
'Shame!' exclaimed Venetia. 'What is shame?'
'Look, there is a pretty butterfly!' exclaimed Mistress Pauncefort.
'Did you ever see such a pretty butterfly, Miss?'
'I do not care about butterflies to-day, Mistress Pauncefort; I like
to talk about widows.'
'Was there ever such a child!' exclaimed Mistress Pauncefort, with a
wondering glance.
'I must have had a papa,' said Venetia; 'all the ladies I read about
had papas, and married husbands. Then whom did my mamma marry?'
'Lord! Miss Venetia, you know very well your mamma always tells
you that all those books you read are a pack of stories,' observed
Mistress Pauncefort, with an air of triumphant art.
'There never were such persons, perhaps,' said Venetia, 'but it is not
true that there never were such things as papas and husbands, for all
people have papas; you must have had a papa, Mistress Pauncefort?'
'To be sure I had,' said Mistress Pauncefort, bridling up.
'And a mamma too?' said Venetia.
'As honest a woman as ever lived,' said Mistress Pauncefort.
'Then if I have no papa, mamma must be a wife that has lost her
husband, and that, mamma told me at dinner yesterday, was a widow.'
'Was the like ever seen!' exclaimed Mistress Pauncefort. 'And what
then, Miss Venetia?'
'It seems to me so odd that only two people should live here, and both
be widows,' said Venetia, 'and both have a little child; the only
difference is, that one is a little boy, and I am a little girl.
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