“La, ma’am, ’tis beautiful, but what have I to do with the like?”
“Well, look out for the puce gros de Naples walking dress, about page twenty-nine, and I’ll show you the picture afterwards. Do be quick. I have had it four years, it’s quite good though, only I’m grown a little fuller since, and it don’t fit now. So read it, and you’ll see how I’ll dress you.”
And bending her head forward and knitting her brows, she listened absorbed, while old Mildred helped, or corrected, at every second word, by her blind patroness, babbled and stuttered on with her in duet recitation.
“Walking dress,” said Mildred—
“Go on,” said the lady, who, having this like other descriptions in that cherished work pretty well by heart, led off energetically with her lean old companion, and together they read—
“A pelisse of puce-coloured gros de Naples, the corsage made to sit close to the shape, with a large round pelerine which wraps across in front. The sleeve is excessively large at the upper part of the arm. The fullness of the lower is more moderate. It is confined in three places by bands and terminated by a broad wristband. The pelerine and bands of the sleeves are cased with satin to correspond, and three satin rouleaus are arranged en tablier on the front of the skirt. The bonnet is of rice straw of the cottage shape, trimmed under the brim on the right side, with a band and nœud of gold-coloured ribbon. The crown being also ornamented with gold-coloured ribbon, and a sprig of lilac, placed perpendicularly. Half-boots of black gros de Naples, tipped with black kid.”
Here they drew breath, and Mildred Tarnley was silent for a minute, thinking how much more like a lady her mother used to dress than she was able, and what fine presents of old clothes old Mrs. Fairfield used to send her now and then from Wyvern. For a moment an air of dignity, a sense of feminine vanity, showed itself in the face and mien of Mrs. Tarnley.
“That rice straw bonnet, with the gold-coloured nœud, of course I haven’t got, nor the gros de Naples’ boots—they’re gone, of course, long ago; but it reads best, altogether, and I hadn’t the heart to stop you, nor you to stop reading till we got to the end. And look at the pictures, you’ll easily find it; and I’ll write and have the pelisse sent here by the day-coach. It will be here on Sunday. Do you like it?”
“It is a bit too fine for me, I’m afraid,” said Mildred, smiling in spite of herself, with a grim elation; “my poor mother used to dress herself grand enough, in her day, and keep me handsome also when I was a young thing. But since the ladies come no more to Carwell the Grange has been a dull place, and gives a body enough to do to live, and little thought o’ fine dresses, and few to see them, except o’ Sundays, if ’twas here; not but ’twould be more for the credit o’ the family if old Mildred Tarnley, that’s known down here for housekeeper at the Grange of Carwell, wasn’t turned out quite so poor and dowdy, and seeing them taking the wall o’ me, which their mothers used to courtesy to mine, at church and market, and come up here to the Grange as humble as you please, when money was stirring at Carwell, and I, young as I was, thought more on, a deal more, than the best o’ them.”
“I drink your health, Mildred; as you won’t pledge me, I do it alone.”
“I thank ye, ma’am.”
“Ha, yes, that does me good; I’m tired to death, Mildred.”
“There’s two on us so, ma’am; shall I get you to bed, please?”
“In a minute; give me your hand again, girl; come, come, come—yes, I have it. I think you are more friendly, eh? I think so; but the little goodwill I ever show you now is nothing to what I mean for you when I come to Wyvern—nothing.”
And she strengthened the present assurance with an oath, and grasped Mildred’s hard brown hand very tight.
“And you’ll be kind to me, Mildred, when I want it; and I shall want it, mind, and I’ll never forget it to you; ’twill be the making of you. I’ll show you how much I trust you, for I’ll put myself in your power.”
And, hereupon, she shook her hand harder. Her face and manner were changed, and she looked horribly frightened for some minutes.
“I don’t blame you, Mildred, but this thing must not go on—it must not be.”
Mildred in her own way looked disconcerted and even agitated at this odd speech. She screwed her mouth sharply to one side, and with her brow knit had turned a frightened gaze on her visitor.
“There’s things as can’t be undone, and things as can,” said she, after a pause oracularly; “best not meddle or make—worms that is, and dust that will be, and God over all.”
“God over all, why not?” repeated the old soldier vaguely, and stood up suddenly with a kind of terrified shudder, “take me, hold me, quick.”
“A fit? La bless us,” cried Tarnley, seizing her in her lean arms.
The lady answered nothing, but grasped her fast by the wrist and shoulder, and so she stood for a time shuddering and swaying. “Better at last,” she said, “a little—put me in the chair.”
And she made a great shuddering sigh or two, and called for water and “hartshorn,” and the hysteria subsided. And now she seemed overpowered with languor, and answered faintly and in monosyllables to old Mrs. Tarnley’s uncomfortable inquiries.
“Now I shall get a sleep,” she said at last, in low drowsy tones, interrupted with heavy sighs, and she looked so ill that old Mildred more than ever wished her back
