“La,” cried Pamela, “how you remember it all, Miss! And sure, to my mind, ’twas scarce an auspicious opening.”
“Nay, but it was, for it set me off laughing. And, cries I, an idiot and inane! ‘You’re vastly obliging, sir, but pray remember that I, at least, am subject to authority.’ ‘And so am I, madam,’ cried he, ‘’tis by my uncle’s orders that I am in the town, so you and I may perhaps call ourselves the only sane people in a room full of vapidity. And such being the case,’ he went on, ‘you will allow me to add most respectfully that we scarce meet altogether as strangers, and that I trust our first meeting may not be the last.’”
The milliner gave a whistle.
“Quick work,” quoth she, “a’most like putting on the feathers before the straw is stitched together.”
“Oh, nay indeed!” cried the other again, “we were somehow so comfortably at home with each other from the first! And after we had danced a minuet—it is not vanity on my part to say that I can dance and that better than dear Jane, though, to be sure, it scarce matters how she steps for none will look but at her face—we got on amazing in the figures, and afterwards better still in the talk we had together. Never was there such harmony of taste, I do assure you; I told him how vastly I preferred the country gentlemen to the town fop, and he told me the town young lady could never hold a candle to the fresh country creature that would be up betimes in the dairy, and still-room. And oh, a dairy is all my joy, and as to a still-room why, I scarce know how the time flies, once I’m in ours! Our housekeeper is very old, and Mamma is very kind and lets me help her. And there’s no butter half so good as mine in the county, and the dear cows, I love the very sight of them. Aye and I can milk, too. And there’s not a herb in the garden I don’t know the use of. And——”
“Why, Miss,” said the milliner, amused, “what a mistress you’ll be of a country house of your own, one of these days!”
“Why, that’s what he said!”
“Did he indeed?” Pamela laughed out loud.
“Nay, but,” the girl’s face, which had wonderfully brightened, fell; “You must remember he thought I was the Beauty all the time! He has heard about Jane. ’Tis quite clear. He is in love with her without ever having seen her, and that was why the more charming, the more ardent, respectfully ardent, he was, the more my heart sank. Though indeed I do think our minds were in sympathy, and to be sure, sister scarce knows rhubarb from angelica, or cream cheese from curds.”
“Ah, if I’d been you,” said Pamela Pounce with fire, “I’d have pulled my mask off, Miss, and faced him and said, ‘By your tongue you’re a man of sense, show yourself one by your eyes.’”