“Miss Burrage,” cried Mrs. Bertrand, in a tone of voice so loud that she could not avoid hearing it, “are not you one of the young lady’s friends?”
“What young lady’s friend?” replied Miss Burrage, without stirring from her seat.
“Miss Burrage, here’s a purse for a young lady,” said Mrs. Puffit.
“A purse for whom? Where?” said Miss Burrage, at last deigning to rise, and come out of her recess.
“There, ma’am,” said the milliner. “Now for her glass!” whispered Mrs. Puffit to Mrs. Bertrand. And, exactly as it had been predicted, Miss Burrage eyed her aunt Dinah through her glass, pretending not to know her. “The purse is not mine,” said she, coolly: “I know nothing of it—nothing.”
“Hetty!” exclaimed her aunt; but as Miss Burrage still eyed her through her glass with unmoved invincible assurance, Dinah thought that, however strong the resemblance, she was mistaken. “No, it can’t be Hetty. I beg pardon, madam,” said she, “but I took you for—Did not I hear you say the name of Burrage, friend Puffit?”
“Yes, Burrage; one of the Burrages of Dorsetshire,” said the milliner, with malicious archness.
“One of the Burrages of Dorsetshire: I beg pardon. But did you ever see such a likeness, friend Barker, to my poor niece, Hetty Burrage?”
Miss Burrage, who overheard these words, immediately turned her back upon her aunt. “A grotesque statue of starch,—one of your quakers, I think, they call themselves: Bristol is full of such primitive figures,” said Miss Burrage to Clara Hope, and she walked back to the recess and to Lady Di.
“So like, voice and all, to my poor Hester,” said Dinah Plait, and she wiped the tears from her eyes. “Though Hetty has neglected me so of late, I have a tenderness for her; we cannot but have some for our own relations.”