“She’s no lady! and I told her so to her face!”
The door opened as she spoke, and Mrs. Doran, in her best beaded mantle and feathered toque, sailed in, now all smiles and affability.
“Well, Mary”—offering two hands—“this is indeed great news. I am so glad, and I have come as your oldest friend, to offer my warm congratulations, and good wishes.”
“Thank you, yer ladyship!” said the girl faintly.
“Oh, you are the ladyship now, Mary,” she rejoined, with an affable smile, “and this is, I presume, Miss Usher?” And as Miss Usher was only a legal woman, she bowed stiffly, and subsided into a chair.
“And now do tell me all about it, my dear? No one can be more interested than I am, who have seen you all your life, and have met your own mother.”
“It’s just this, yer ladyship—that I am not Mrs. Foley’s daughter at all, but a nurse child she kept, and made out was her own—and buried her girlie instead of me; and now it’s all come out.”
“And are you immensely delighted?”
“No, I am not; I’d sooner stay as I am, except for a few things. I’m not educated, nor fit to be a lady.”
“Oh, you will soon learn, Lady Joseline,” put in Miss Usher. “It will all come quite easy; it is so much pleasanter to go up, than down.”