“I’ll answer him,” said Janet, fiercely; and then in a whisper, “should you have turned back if it had been some one else?”
Patty’s sole reply was a look of reproach, one, though, that spoke volumes, as the deformed girl left the room to encounter the heavy, surly-voiced young man, who, upon being sharply asked what he wanted—
“Didn’t quite know. Perhaps it were a bird, or it might be a ferret; but he wasn’t quite sure. How-so-be, she wasn’t the one as was in the shop the other day. Where was the other one? Oh! she was busy, was she? Then p’raps he’d call again;” after which the heavy gentleman loitered slowly out of the shop, to hang about the window, glancing in at the birds and chewing straws.
“He’s gone!” said Janet, returning to the room. “He’s a hideous wretch, ugly as I am. Such impudence! He did not want to buy anything. But what a little coward you are!”
“Yes,” sighed Patty, “I am—I know I am. Ah! Janet,” she continued, after a short pause, “I wish I were a lady!”
“For the sake of the gay cavalier, of course,” laughed Janet, sneeringly, and then she looked angrily across at her companion, who bent her head, whispering to herself—
“She won’t believe me—she won’t believe me.”
Janet’s long fingers now grew very busy over her work, as she nimbly arranged the wing, tail, back, and breast feathers of a partridge, with gum, upon a stiff piece of card, following, with an accuracy learned of the birds amongst which she had so long dwelt, the soft curves and graceful swellings of the natural form, making up pair after pair of ornaments, destined, after being finished off by Canau, and prettily mounted, to be disposed of by D. Wragg at a profitable rate.
Punctual to his time, the little Frenchman returned, and, quite at home, sauntered into the room.
“Good girls! good girls!” he said, lightly. “Now the colours and the brush. Did the Madame Vinks bring the music she said she would borrow from the chef d’orchestre? No? Ah! then, but I am disappoint, and must wait. Janet, that bird is too big—round—plump—too much like the Madame Vinks; but we will paint his beak and leg. He does look fit for the chef—the cook—and not for the ornament.”