“Heigho! So Barnes is in it, too, is she?”
“Yes, of course. It’s she helps undress you and puts away your clothes and she says the wardrobes and closets are just packed with them. She says it’s a great worriment to her to keep the moths and bugs out of ’em. She says it would be worse, only you like silk things best and moths don’t much trouble the silks. She——”
“My dear, let me explain what mostly ‘worries’ our good soul Barnes. As lady’s-maid her perquisites are my cast-off clothing. This she sells for a considerable sum and puts the proceeds in the bank. So I shouldn’t think she would object to my buying as many new things as possible. Humph! If Barnes has got to betraying bedroom secrets Barnes must be dealt with.”
Madam Dalrymple leaned back in her chair, tossed the Review aside, and tapped with her tiny cane upon the floor. This cane she called her “affectation,” laughingly declaring that she carried it because it happened to be a fad of fashionable folk just then, and only the old maid servant knew how sorely it was really needed for support. At that very moment, indeed, it was almost impossible for the proud woman to prevent the contortion of her handsome features by a spasm of pain. Rheumatism held her in thrall, but still she laughed and defied it; believing that no Waldron should be overcome by anything so plebeian as physical distress. She would carry herself proudly to the end and when that came, let it come quickly!
Barnes appeared and was bidden to bring hat and mantle; and in a few moments more the Dalrymple carriage was whirling storeward, its mistress and her young western cousin making such a lovely picture against its dark cushions that more than one person looked and envied. Not the least of these a small flower-girl, clad in a rather soiled white-and-scarlet frock, who hid her misshapen shoulders against a building and wistfully held up her violets for sale.
“Five cents a bunch, lady! Only—five—centses—a bunch!”
Something familiar in the shrill cry caught Jessica’s ear, but the carriage had turned into Broadway and it was too late to see if that were Sophy Nestor who had called her wares.
Greatly to Jessica’s grief the two girls had not met since that day of their brief acquaintance. Sophy had duly taken her stand in the Square and there had watched and waited for a glimpse of the fair-haired “angel” who had brightened a few hours of her life. But it was Madam Dalrymple, not Jessica, who discovered the girl posted as near her own iron gates as could be without entering them and who had promptly dispatched Tipkins to interview the Square patrolman on the subject. Result: Sophy was banished as a “nuisance”; and, vowing vengeance against everybody who had interfered with her, established herself on the very next corner beyond this policeman’s beat. Thence she gibed at and mocked him, with all her gutter eloquence, matching her puny strength against his authority and affecting him not at all, save that he became much interested in the defiant little creature and pitying her for her physical affliction, marveled at the peculiarities of the rich who could call such as she a “nuisance.”
There, alas! She had waited and watched in vain for her new friend. It so chanced that for the first time in her life the little Californian fell ill of a slight cold, which Madam instantly magnified into something dreadful; suggesting diphtheria, and other dire diseases, to the portly physician who came in his carriage and looked the small maid over.
“Nothing in the world but a mere cold, dear Madam. There’s not the least cause for anxiety. Keep her indoors for a time and she’ll be all right.” Then he departed, pocketing his goodly fee, and leaving his old patron of exactly the same opinion she had held all along.