To make me worse, too, there was that poor Clara—pale-faced, red-eyed, and desolate-looking—sitting there dressed, and resting her hot head upon her hand as she gazed out of the window; and though I wished to comfort her, I felt to want the comfort more myself. At last I could bear it no longer, and, in place of weeping gently, I was so nervous, and low, and upset with the night’s troubles, that I sat down and had a regular good cry, and all the while with that great, stupid, fat, gawky goose of a Patty sitting and staring at me, with her head all on one side, as she was brushing out half of her hair, which she had not finished in all the time I had taken to dress.
“Don’t, Patty!” I half shrieked, at last—she was so tiresome.
“Well, I ain’t,” said Patty.
“But please don’t, then!” I exclaimed, angrily.
“Don’t what?” said the great, silly thing.
“Don’t stare so, and look so big and glumpy!” I exclaimed; for I felt as if I could have knocked off her tiresome head, only it was so horribly big; and I don’t care what anybody says, there never were anywhere before such a tempting pair of cheeks to slap as Patty’s—they always looked so round, and red, and soft, and pluffy.
“You ain’t well,” said the nasty, aggravating thing, in her silly, slow way. “Take one of my Seidlitz powders.”
“Ugh!” I shuddered at the very name of them. Just as if one of the nasty, prickly-water, nose-tickling things was going to do me any good at such a time as this.
It really was enough to make one hit her. I never did take a Seidlitz powder but once, and then it was just after reading “Undine” with the Fraülein, and my head was all full of water-nymphs, and gods, and “The Mummelsee and the Water Maidens,” and all sorts. And when I shut my eyes, and drank the fizzing-up thing, it all seemed to tickle my nose and lips; and I declare if I did not half fancy I was drinking the waters of the sparkling Rhine, and one of the water-gods had risen to kiss me, and that was his nasty prickly moustache I had felt. But to return to that dreadful morning when Patty wanted me to take one of her Seidlitz powders.
“Mix ’em in two glasses is best,” she went on, without taking any notice of my look of disgust—“the white paper in one, and the blue paper in the other, and then drink off the blue first, and wait while you count twenty, and then drink off the white one—slushions they call ’em. It does make you feel so droll, and does your head ever so much good. Do have one, dear!”