“Pray Mrs. Tabbishaw,” wrote my Lady Kilcroney’s woman to the Mantua maker in Cheapside, “send Pamela along with those white feathers of her ladyship’s, which you has, this ever so long, to be died blew, yours obleeged,
“Lydia Pounce.”
Now the fact of Pamela being Lydia’s niece did not endear her to that maturing damsel, “which,” she was fond of remarking to any beholding them together, “do seem prodigious absurd, seeing as how there’s scarce a year or two betwixt us.”
But if Miss Lydia was not fond of displaying herself in public with a fine strapping young woman of twenty-three who had an inconsiderate way of dropping out “Aunt” at every second word (“which, reely, my dear, I vow she does a’ purpose”—and perhaps indeed she did), my Lady Kilcroney’s indispensable Abigail, as she never omitted informing all and sundry, had a remarkable sense of family feeling. She had placed the inconvenient niece with the matchless Eglantine. With such a start in life she considered the girl’s fortune made; and if Paris were to become the stable abode of so much bloom and bumptiousness, she, for one, would continue to bear the separation with fortitude.
When, after two or three years’ absence, however, Pamela reappeared on the scene, extraordinarily Frenchified, unconscionably beautified, and quite unpardonably wideawake, having quarrelled to the death with Madame Eglantine, and possessing, to boot, only the clothes on her back and the price of her ticket, Miss Lydia Pounce was very justly annoyed. It was quite impossible to send the girl home, since bankruptcy threatened the Kentish farm. Once again Lydia’s fine conception of family obligation came to the fore. There was Mrs. Tabbishaw, at whose second-rate establishment in Cheapside the elder Miss Pounce had been in the habit of having such odd jobs done for her ladyship as the dyeing and re-curling of feathers, the cleaning and mending of unimportant laces, the quilting of winter petticoats. Mrs. Tabbishaw owed her a good turn, and if she would now make room for Pamela, give her board and just enough wage for her clothes, Lydia would see to it that her mistress should go as far as to purchase an occasional hat.
Pamela had no choice but to fall in with her aunt’s arrangements, for had not Madame Eglantine sworn that she would give her no character? (As if, indeed, it had been her fault that that odious Monsieur Ildefonse should take to ogling her behind Madame’s back, and her staring into the mirror!) She knew very well, however, that she was sadly wasted at the poor, unmodish place; and, indeed, since Mrs. Tabbishaw was too stupid to realise the treasure that had come her way, the younger Miss Pounce was forthwith turned into a maid-of-all-work. Her long, clever fingers were set to scrub and to cook, to pink or to quilt, or to whatever odd job pressed the most. She was kept running to and fro with parcels, and up and downstairs on messages. She was sent galloping to shops and warehouses to match ribbons and velvets, and all the while the wives and daughters of the city went on purchasing the modes of the year before last, as interpreted by vulgar minds, while spirit, delicacy, art, dash, millinery genius in fine, was actually within their reach! Not that Pamela Pounce had any desire to adorn them. Her aspirations flew very high. Some day she meant to be as great in her line as Eglantine herself, to exercise her talents upon heads as worth while as my Lady Kilcroney’s own.
“You’re jealous of me, you cat!” It was thus she apostrophised the worthy Aunt Lydia in the solitude of her bare attic chamber. “You’re jealous of me. You know you’re an old maid and peevish, and I’m only twenty-three and better-looking than you ever were in your life, with twice your wits, though yours are as sharp as your elbows. You think I’d take the shine out of you, you lemon-faced thing! You know I’d toss up a bit of lace and feather for your ladyship’s boudoir cap, and that her ladyship would nigh faint with the ecstasy of it when she saw herself in the glass. And a sweet pretty creature she is—the one glimpse I ever had of her, and that through the door, you mean thing! Ah, give me a chance, and I swear the sedans and the carriages would be blocking the streets to get at me. But not if you can help it, old Miss Pounce! You’re to be the only important Miss Pounce in this world; that’s your little game! But ’tis not for nothing I’ve got it all in me!”
And hugging her knees as she sat on her bed—the chair being too rickety to bear her fine proportions—Miss Pounce the younger would map out her future in glorious processions of feathers and head-dresses, hats and bonnets, wreaths and négligés.
Through all the hardships, the dreary daily grind, the unkindness and the unremitting exertions, her star shone upon her with a light that never wavered. The first winter was a trying one, and Pamela found London, after Paris, a cruel, ugly place; a cruel cold one, and a cruel hard one. When the summer came, existence might be easier, but the hours were longer with the daylight, and there were nights when even Pamela’s high heart gave way, and she would drop on her pallet bed almost too exhausted to sleep. She had grown thin, and there was a certain fierceness in the fire of her bright grey eyes, as if they looked on all humanity as an enemy, by that July 16th, 1789, when my Lady Kilcroney’s woman wrote for the “blew feathers.”
“Oh, drat!” said Mrs. Tabbishaw.