“Ribands—yes, ma’am—what sort? Keep an eye upon the glass,” whispered the milliner to her shop girl, as she stooped behind the counter for a drawer of ribands—“keep an eye on the glass, Jesse—a girl of the town, I take it. What colour, ma’am?”
“Blue—‘cerulean blue.’ Here, child,” said Angelina, turning to Betty Williams, “here’s a riband for you.”
Betty Williams did not hear, for Betty was fascinated by the eyes of the great doll, opposite to which she stood fixed.
“Lord, what a fine lady! and how hur stares at Betty Williams!” thought she: “I wish hur would take her eyes off me.”
“Betty! Betty Williams!—a riband for you,” cried Angelina, in a louder tone.
Betty started—“Miss!—a riband!” She ran forward, and, in pushing by the doll, threw it backward: Mrs. Puffit caught it in her arms, and Betty, stopping short, curtsied, and said to the doll—“Peg pardon, miss—peg pardon, miss—tit I hurt you?—peg pardon. Pless us! ‘tis a toll, and no woman, I teclare.”
The milliner and Jesse now burst into uncontrollable, and, as Angelina feared, “unextinguishable laughter.” Nothing is so distressing to a sentimental heroine as ridicule: Miss Warwick perceived that she had her share of that which Betty Williams excited; and she who imagined herself to be capable of “combating, in all its Proteus forms, the system of social slavery,” was unable to withstand the laughter of a milliner and her ‘prentice.
“Do you please to want any thing else, ma’am?” said Mrs. Puffit, in a saucy tone—“Rouge, perhaps?”
“I wish to know, madam,” said Angelina, “whether a lady of the name of Hodges does not lodge here?”
“A lady of the name of Hodges!—no, ma’am—I’m very particular about lodgers—no such lady ever lodged with me.—Jesse! to the door—quick!—Lady Mary Tasselton’s carriage.”