“I’m not to go back without the money,” said Pamela.
“Dear, to be sure! And my Lady so put about as never! What with her new hat being such a failure, and her out of sorts too, over her gown for the Birthday, she about to take up her first turn as Lady-in-Waiting into the bargain—Court friends being that spiteful, and my Lord having the ill luck at Whites, and Bellairs’ young nephew, Mr. Jocelyn, an audacious, gaming, young rascal, if ever I see one, as set on the dice as my Lord, and him but a beggar, so to speak. And my Lady paying his passage back to India twice over, to my certain knowledge, and him losing it on the green cloth within the hour! Well, my Lady’s done with him, that’s one good thing. ’Tain’t the moment for Tabbishaw, and so I tell you!”
“Why, la!” Pamela had a graceful, lazy mockery in her eye and voice which, however ill-placed in one of her humble station, somehow became her. “My Lord must have been, indeed, uncommon out of luck, if my Lady Kilcroney, her as every one knows is a-rolling in old Bellairs’ money, can’t pay twelve sovereigns to a poor shop in the City. But give me back the bill, Aunt, and I’ll tell Mrs. Tabbishaw she’s got to wait till my Lord casts a better tot.”
Lady Kilcroney’s maid gazed at her audacious relative as if deprived of speech. Nevertheless, in all her wrath there was a certain grudging admiration.
“The girl’s as insolent as if she’d been born a lady!”
The thought flashed across her mind as she whisked through the door brandishing the account. On the threshold the power of language returned to her.
“As if twelve sovereigns wasn’t as many farthings to one of my Lady’s wealth!”
Here she nearly cannoned against Pompey with a tray, and bidding him wait to be dealt with till his hands were empty of chocolate, disappeared, objurgating, down the passage.
Pamela was half-way through her second cup of chocolate, vastly refreshed and comforted by it, and the agreeable little cakes which had accompanied it, when her relative returned, with a red spot on either cheek bone, her nostrils dilated over panting breaths. She had all the air of one who emerges from a wrestle. The light of battle, was still in her eye, but of battle victorious.
“Here, miss,” she cried, “thirteen sovereigns to settle your Tabbishaw, and milady says you can keep the change. Gave me all sorts, she did, being, as who should know better than I, from early morning, my dear, in as peevish a temper as ever was. And—and what she can do in that way,” said Lydia, turning up her eyes, “you’d never believe if you hadn’t seen, the world being made up of Diddumses. There wasn’t an item along here she didn’t have her scratch at, and in the end, she says: ‘For Heaven’s sake stop talking!’ (That’s how poor servants is treated).