“My floor’s clean, Miss Pet, I’d have you for to know, hand wouldn’t dirty hanybody’s things!” answered Miss Priscilla, sharply, and with flashing eyes; “but them there things hof your’n musses hit hup, which his something I never likes my room to be, being neat myself, a-slavin’, and toilin’, and strivin’ to keep things to rights from morning till night, with people a-pitchin’ hof things round huntil hit looks like a ’og-stye. Wah! wah!”
And Miss Priscilla got up and picked up all Pet’s garments, and carried them up to her own bedroom, out of the way.
And then Pet, with her diabolical spirit of mischief uppermost, went flying through the house, opening, shutting, slamming and banging the doors, in a way that drove the peace-loving spinster to the verge of madness, and made her sour temper ten degrees sourer, until her very look would have turned treacle to vinegar. In and out, up and down stairs, getting astride of the bannisters and sliding down, at the imminent danger of breaking her neck, ransacking every room, and turning everything topsy-turvy and upside down, and “mussing things” generally, until Miss Priscilla Toosypegs “vowed a vow” in her secret heart that the next time she saw Miss Petronilla Lawless coming, she would lock every door in the house, and send Cupid out with his “blunderingbuss” to shoot her, rather than let her ever darken her doors again.
Dinner at length was announced, and Miss Priscilla began to breathe freely again, in the hope of at least a few moments, respite from her tormentor. As Pet entered the sitting-room—for Miss Toosypegs dined in her sitting-room—her thin, dark, bright face all aglow with fun and frolic; her black eyes dancing and sparkling with insufferable light; her short, crisp, black curls all tangled and damp over her shoulders and round, polished, saucy, boyish forehead, she looked the very embodiment, the very incarnate spirit of mischief and mirth. She looked like a little grenade, all jets and sparkles—a little barrel of gunpowder, at any moment ready to explode—a wild, untamed little animal, very beautiful, but very dangerous.
And there, at the head of the table, the greatest contrast to her dark, bright, fiery little neighbor that could well be found, sat Miss Toosypegs, as prim, stiff and upright as if she had swallowed a ramrod—as sour, sharp and acid as if she had been spoon-fed on verjuice from infancy upward.
Pet’s eyes went dancing over the table to examine the bill of fare. Now, reader, our Pet was not a gourmand, nor yet an epicure, by any means—what she got to eat was very little trouble to her, indeed; but she knew Miss Priscilla was intensely miserly, and, having plenty, begrudged every mouthful eaten at her board. Therefore, the wicked little elf determined to give her a slight idea of what she could do in the eating-line when provoked to it.
But alas! little was there on that table to provoke the appetite. Two cups of pale, sickly-looking tea, a plate with four small, dropsical-looking potatoes, a consumptive red-herring, and, by way of dessert, a pigeon-pie. That was all.
Pet’s face fell to a formidable length for an instant; the next, a bright idea struck her, and she inwardly exclaimed, as she saw Miss Priscilla’s eyes rest lovingly on the pigeon-pie:
“Pet, child, you’ll be starved, you know, if you don’t look out, before you get home. It’s your duty to show Miss Priscilla what she owes to her guests; so you walk right into that pigeon-pie, and eat every morsel of it, though you should burst!”
“Sit down, Miss Pet,” said Miss Priscilla, solemnly, pointing to her chair, and holding her knife and fork threateningly over the ghostly-looking red-herring, “for what we are about to receive. Which do you like best, the ’ead or the tail, Miss Pet?—take your choice.”