CHAPTER XLVII.
MISS PERFECT’S TOILET
“Short the evenings growing,” said Aunt Dinah, looking out upon the slanting amber sunlight, that made the landscape all so golden. “Long shadows already!” and she glanced at her broad old gold watch. “How the years go over us; Winnie, you’ve been a long time with me now—ha, ha, a long time. When first you came to me, you thought me such a shrew, and I thought you such a fool, that we both thought a parting must very soon come of it—an old termagant and an old goose,” continued Miss Perfect, nodding her head at her image in the glass. “We were not altogether wrong in that, perhaps, old Dobbs—don’t interrupt me—but, though we were neither lambs nor Solomons, we answered one another. We never parted, and we’ll live on so, don’t you think, to the end of the chapter, and a pretty long chapter it has been, and pretty near the end, Winnie Dobbs, it must be for both of us. ‘Here endeth the first lesson,’ and then comes the judgment, Winnie—‘here endeth the second lesson,’—our two great lessons, death and judgment: think of that, my good old Winnie, when you hear Doctor Mainwaring or Doctor Wagget, it is now, saying, ‘here endeth the first lesson,’ and ‘here endeth the second lesson,’ and much good may it do you.”
Aunt Dinah’s lectures on such themes were generally very odd, and her manner sometimes a little flighty—people who did not know her would have almost said waggish. But her handmaiden received them always with a reverent acquiescence, having as full a faith in her mistress as honest Sancho, in his most trusting moods, ever reposed in the wisdom of the Knight of La Mancha.
“Death and judgment, sure enough. Death, at any rate, that’s certain,” maundered old Dobbs.
“And judgment, too, I hope,” said Aunt Dinah, sharply.
“And judgment, too,” supplemented Winnie.
“What do you mean, old Dobbs, as if one was more certain than the other?”
“Ay, indeed. What is there certain?—nothing—nothing,” she continued, not exactly apprehending her mistress.