“Yes, Popple, I was. A pink gown, flounced to the waist, muslin. A sweet thing it is, and suits me uncommon. Perhaps you’d like to know if I wear a white bouffand to it, and the style of hat?”
“Oh, never mind the hat, Miss Pounce! Since you are so obleeging as to permit me another question, might I ask if you was a-setting in a garden a-holding of a child upon your lap?”
The colour flew like a flag to the head milliner’s cheek and fire to her eye. Then she abruptly turned her back upon the questioner, and the youngest assistant, who happened to be taking a hat out of a drawer, was surprised to see that she was struggling with a violent inclination to laugh.
“Ho!”
The ejaculation leaped with a world of horror from Polly’s lips.
Her superior wheeled back upon her.
“Yes, Miss Popple, I was sitting in a garden, and very pleasant it was among the roses; and I had a child upon my lap, the dearest, sweetest little creature that ever breathed, a perfect cherub! A girl, if you want to know, Miss Popple, and though dark, like to be a beauty.”
The young ladies tittered, though there were looks interchanged, too. And Pamela’s tone, tripped up with subterranean mirth, sounded to some of them rather hysterical.
Polly, after a dumb show of wounded female delicacy, expressively rendered, tottered from the room as if her legs could scarce carry so much horrified rectitude; and the incident apparently dropped. Indeed, Pamela regarded it merely as another of Popple’s nasty bits of spleen. A low-minded, common creature! As if her girls would be taken in by such vile suggestions! As if the life of Pamela Pounce, head milliner, was not as fresh and fair as her own face!
An episode which Pamela could not but consider as curious in the circumstances presently occurred and drove the very existence of Popple from her mind.