Whether rendered irritable by pain, or overwhelmed by disappointment at the probable loss of Mr. W., or goaded by the thought of the leeches, certain it is that the afflicted daughter broke out with a passion which amazed Miss Pounce so much that she turned on the threshold to stare, and perhaps even admire.
The beauty declared that Mamma was a nasty unkind thing, and that she herself wished she was dead.
“Jane!” cried Lady Amelia, in a voice of thunder. “Sarah, take your sister away.”
Ere the sobbing girl, advancing in three totters and a stop to gasp, could reach the door, Lady Amelia bethought herself of a fitting punishment which spoke volumes for the matron’s methods of education.
“Your sister shall go in your place to-night. Yes, Jane, not another word. I have quite made up my mind. Sarah, get ready to accompany me.”
Pamela slipped out of the room after the girls, and was witness on the landing of a small fraternal scene which confirmed her previous opinion of the lovely Jane. This aggrieved maiden first nearly fell over the bandboxes, and then was seized by such a convulsion of rage and jealousy at sight of them, that, shaking herself free of Sarah’s encircling arm, she slapped and pinched her sister, and then, at Pamela’s horrified interference, dashed up the staircase to her own chamber.
“’Pon my word,” thought the milliner, “Mr. W. may have had the escape of his life! A doll lined with a vixen! ’Tis the most dismal combination. Don’t cry, Miss,” she went on aloud, as Sarah sniffed into her useful pocket handkerchief, “don’t cry, there’s a dear young lady! Let me come in your room with you, and see what I’ve got in these boxes. You shall look nice to-night, or my name’s not Pamela Pounce.”
Now Sarah’s chamber happened to be a narrow slit at the back of her mother’s apartment, for of course Beauty had to be well lodged, no matter how pokily plain Miss Sarah might fare.
Nipping a bunch of bandboxes dexterously in each hand, Pamela bundled after the astonished Cinderella into her dingy little cell.
“As for the price, Miss, bless you,” she whispered breathlessly, with her back against the door. “You’ll pay me when you’re married.” Then she smacked her lips as if the dish of her choice were spread before her. “I don’t know when I’ve took to anyone as I’ve took to you. La! We must have candles though, your window giving on a shaft as I see, and being, so to speak, worse than none. But I’d rather dress a lady by candlelight, any day in the year. And what was you thinking of wearing, Miss?”