As a pupil he proved extremely apt, and in a few minutes he was giving quite a tolerable imitation of the motions of a woman of quality. His petticoat bothered him exceedingly, but in a little time even these troubles he overcame. Once he tried a simper, and did it prettily. Then in a highly successful way he played his shoulders like an arch and laughing miss. His next attempt was at a curtsey, but here misfortune came, as his heel caught in his skirt and he fell flat upon his back.
“The penalty of impertinence,” said I. “As though every delicate accomplishment of Venus is to be obtained in half an hour!”
He rose, however, with fine gravity, and asked me how it should be done. It was a part of his character to let nothing beat him, and in this instance he tried a full twenty times rather than a curtsey should become his master.
There was one subject in which we were much exercised. How were his coat and vest to be disposed of? The search was to be of the strictest kind, therefore no risks must be run. It was Emblem who grappled with the difficulty. Stealing to his lordship’s dressing-room she mingled them temporarily with his clothing, as masculine attire in that place was not likely to excite remark.
This had just been done, I was still in the middle of my tutelage, and making Miss Prudence imitate the cadence of my voice in high falsetto, when a knock upon the door startled us extremely. Emblem turned white as any pillow-slip; I began to tremble and could not have spoke a word that minute for my life; but the disguised fugitive looked at me, and looked at Emblem, smiled a little, and calmly said “Come in!” in the identical tone he had been practising.
A terrible being sailed into the room; no less a person than my Aunt. She paused upon the threshold to gaze at the fair stranger in both dignity and doubt. Unable to recall the face she screwed her gold-rimmed glasses on her nose and stared steadily down upon Miss Prue with that polite impertinence that flourishes most in dowagers. The time this manœuvre took gave me the necessary moment to recover myself. I seized it, smiled on my aunt’s bland insolence and said:
“My dear aunt, permit me to present to you Miss Prudence Canticle, that very familiar and dear friend of mine of whom you have heard me so often speak. She shares all the secrets of my bosom, and I therefore, my dear aunt, commend her with the more confidence to yours.”
“I am charmed, I am delighted, I am sure,” says the dowager, sweeping a stately bow upon the phrase with great majesty.
“Madam,” says the lad, “I am infarnally glad of your acquaintancy.”
My aunt, the dowager, was a person of too much breeding to express or to otherwise betray any astonishment at this; but I am sure she felt it, for though she had never seen Prue, my pious friend in propria persona, she had seen her letters, and on the strength of those epistles had held her image up before me as a paragon of gentlewomen and a mirror of the Christian virtues. I dare not look at my aunt’s stern mien lest I broke out in a peal of laughter; but the lad, with a slight curl at his lips, and a saucy gleam within his eye, met full the shock of it, and quailed not.