“Who are they, child? if they are decent people, it alters the case entirely.”
“They are not decent people,” said the child, pettishly; “they are very genteel people, and dress quite beautifully, and have a country-house, where I have played many a time; and they have a fine instrument, and more books than you have, and I love them dearly.”
“But who are they, my dear?”
“Why, to be sure, they are their father’s daughters, Mr. Turner, the great baker; every body knows Mr. Turner’s shop, I suppose.”
The lady was distressed. She began a speech, endeavouring to prove, that although gratitude was very good in its place, yet, when it was advisable to forget its object, then it was no longer good, but foolish, and improper, and unfashionable; but she checked herself in the midst of this exordium, by recollecting that the intellects of her pupil were unequal to all investigation, but that her inclination, youth, and temper could be more easily wrought upon. She began to load her with finery, take her to the play, though she fell asleep in the second act, speak of her in her own hearing as a wit and a beauty, shake her head knowingly whenever her city connections were alluded to; and therefore it was no wonder that in a short time the child forgot the friends she had loved, grew ashamed of the parents she had honoured, learnt to prattle on subjects of which she knew nothing, and to affect all the premature airs of a woman, with more than the usual ignorance of a child, as children are now usually instructed.
Perhaps a womanized child of this description is the most disagreeable thing in existence, and is rendered only the more so, from any talent or natural acuteness it may happen to possess, since that never fails to give a spice of sin to what would otherwise be mere folly. The thinking mind shudders at the airs of infantine coquetry and malicious sneers, which are merely ludicrous to another stander-by; but how any person can be either indifferent to such a waste and perversion of human nature, or behold it with pleasure, is inconceivable. Mrs. Thornton was, however, so far the dupe of her own folly, that she conceived Miss Holdup the finest child she had ever known, and a decisive proof of her own talents for education. It was true, she had lavished upon her all her stores of information, in the same way that, agreeably to her own notions of dress and pleasure, she had expended upon her sums which her husband thought prodigious; and the result of both had been to make her what might be truly called a grand serious pantomime, or an artificial curiosity, for nature was completely banished her composition.
“Look at my lovely ward,” she would exclaim, in rapture; “how totally different she is from any other child! she will never be mistaken for one of the lower order!”
True; but neither could she be mistaken for a gentlewoman: the appearance of the child was that of a figurante, ready equipped for her part at the opera; for, although in her twelfth year, she wore trowsers and petticoats that did not reach to her knees; they were, it is true, trimmed with the most costly Mechlin, formed by the most tasteful milliner; but as her shape was by no means graceful, and her mode of life, by harassing her into puny ill health, kept her wretchedly thin, she resembled at a distance a small windmill about to be set in motion; and when near her, it was impossible not to believe that her clothes had been stripped to the middle, for the sake of washing her bony shoulders perfectly clean.
But, alas! the interior was more naked, or dressed in some parts merely for exhibition: the poor child knew the steps of the last new dance and the name of new music; she could finger a little, and knew a few words of French from the vocabulary; but to the history of her country she was a perfect stranger, and, what was far worse, was ignorant of all religion, all duties. When she was out of temper, which was an increasing evil as she grew up, she was told only that it “spoiled her face;” if she were guilty of gluttony, she was warned against injuring her shape; but the real motive of good action, the foundation of pure principles, the necessity of self-control, were utterly unknown to her; she never saw them acted upon, nor heard them explained.
Such was the girl who now, with a bustling parade of affection, singled out Matilda as the only child whom she thought worthy of her patronage, and whom she intended to win and to use, when it suited her, in the very same way that ladies of twice her age so frequently make their selection of friends in the acquaintance of an hour.