CHAPTER VIII
In which a Wonderful Bit of Luck Comes out of
Miss Pounce’s Bandbox for Somebody Else
Miss Pamela Pounce, having inadvertently marred a most desirable alliance and incidentally assisted a mad elopement, told herself that it was a sad, tiresome world in which love brought trouble to high and low, and that the best thing a woman of intelligence could do, was to put such stuff out of her head and be grateful that she could work.
“Dear, to be sure,” Pamela wondered, “how did people get along at all who hadn’t some honest occupation to keep their silly minds off themselves?”
’Twas only to be expected that she should have such fretful faces to suit with heads and hats; disappointed mothers coming to complain that Miss’s toque was the wrong shade of blue, passionate damsels vowing that the very sight of a pink rosette made them sick.
Pamela could read “as if it was wrote in print,” as she said herself, the fluctuations of many an amourette, many a well-laid matrimonial scheme. Where her art might help she was ready with the most obliging disinterestedness; when failure had followed on her best efforts she took the despite of her disappointed clients with the utmost philosophy.
It was well that she was philosophic, for her own poor misplaced romance was going singularly ill; so ill, indeed, that it might be said to have dwindled down to nothing at all.
After his tender and respectful farewell to her on the night of Sir Jasper Standish’s Christmas ball, Pamela had hardly seen anything more of her once too ardent admirer. She told herself that ’twas all as it should be; he now understood the kind of girl she was; and his present attitude showed more true affection for her than his former light-minded persecution.
If she had been born his equal, or if she had not been, humble as she was, a creature of principle, what could have parted them? for if ever there had been love——
Pamela was very valiant, and kept her courage up with such reflections. And she found considerable distraction in her work, and quite a fund of consolation in the increased success which it was bringing to her. But when events enabled her to coax a bit of happiness to someone else, through the witchery of her talents, it was more real satisfaction to her than the tot of the weekly accounts.