"Well, mum," said little Ann Bradshaw, the "gell" who was specially retained for Mrs. Powler's service, and who, as jackal, purveyed all the gossip on which, after due preparation, her mistress lived--"well, mum, I du 'low Miss Netty's well enow to look at, but nothing like the Captain, who sure-ly is a main handsome man!"
"Eh, dear heart, did one ever hear the like!" cried Mrs. Powler. "Here's chits and chicks like this talkin' about main handsome men! Why, Ann, you was niver in Exeter, or you'd have seen a waxy image just like the Captain, wi' his black hair and his straight nose, and his blue chin, in the barber's shop-window. Handsome, indeed!" said the old lady, with a recollection of the deceased Mr. Fowler's rotund face; "he's but a poor show; a mere skellinton of a chap!"
"Well, mum, it can't be said that Miss Netty favours her aunt Mrs. D'rinzy neither," said Ann, who, seeing her mistress was disposed for a chat, saw her way to at least postponing the execution of a very portentous and elaborate job of darning which had sat heavy on her soul for some days past. "Mrs. D'rinzy is that slight and slim and gen-teel in her make, which Miss Netty do not follow after."
"Slight, and slim, and genteel make!" repeated Mrs. Powler with much indignation, and a downward glance at her own pursy proportions; "ah, straight up and down like a thrashin'-floor door, if that's what ye mean! Lord love us, here's a gal as I took out of charity, and saved from goin' to the workis, a givin' her 'pinions 'bout figgers, and shapes, and makes, and the like, as though she was a milliner, or a middiff! Well, well, on'y to think!"
"I didn't mean no harm, mum, I'm sure," said the worldly-ise handmaiden, "and I don't think much of Mrs. D'rinzy, nor indeed of the Captain neither, since Nancy Bell--as you know is housemaid up at the Tower--told me how she'd found the stick-stuff which he du make his eyebrows of--black, and grease, and muck."
"No?" exclaimed the old lady, her good temper returning at the chance of hearing some spicy retailable talk. "Du he do that? Do'ee tell, Ann!"
Thus invited, Miss Bradshaw launched out into an elaborate story, rendered more elaborate by her anti-darning proclivities, of the mysteries of Captain Derinzy's toilet, as she had learned them from Miss Bell. Mrs. Powler encouraged her to prattle on this point for a long time; and when she had finished, asked her whether Nancy Bell had mentioned anything about the general way of living at the Tower, more especially as Miss Netty and Mrs. Stothard were concerned.
"Not that anything she says isn't as full of lies as a sieve's full of holes," said the old lady. "I mind the time"--a terrible old lady this, with an unexampled memory for bad things against people--"I mind the time when she was quite a little gell, and went and told the vicar a passil o' lies about her uncle, Ned Richards the blacksmith. And the vicar put Ned into his sermin the next Sunday, and preached at un, and everybody knowed who was meant; and Ned stood up in church, and gev it to the vicar back again; and Ned was had up for brawlin', as they called it, and there was a fine to-do, and all through Nancy Bell. But what does she say of Miss Netty, Ann? Are they kind to her like up there?"
"Oh, yes, mum; Nancy thinks so, leastwise. But no one sees Miss Netty often, mum."
"No one sees her?"