‘Oh, Miss Rose!’ old Saymore’s wife cried out with excitement, attaching a much more practical meaning to the words than Rose had any insight into. ‘Oh, Miss Rose! in our house! Who is it? who is it? Only tell me, and Mr. Saymore will turn him out of doors if it was the best customer we have!’
This rapid acceptance of her complaint, and swift determination to avenge it, brought Rose still more thoroughly to herself.
‘Oh, it is not anyone here. It is a gentleman on—a letter,’ Rose said; and this subdued her. ‘It is not anything Saymore can help me about, nor you, nor anyone.’
‘We are only poor folks, Miss Rose,’ said Keziah, ‘but for a real interest, and wishing you well, there’s none, if it was the Queen herself——’
The ludicrousness of the comparison struck Rose, but struck her not mirthfully—dolefully.
‘It is not much that the Queen can care,’ she said. ‘Anne was presented, but I was never presented. Nobody cares! What was I when Anne was there? Always the little one—the one that was nobody!’
‘But, Miss Rose! Miss Rose!’
Keziah did not know how to put the consolation she wished to give, for indeed she, like everybody else, had mourned the injustice to Anne, which she must condone and accept if she adopted the first suggestion of her sympathy.
‘You know,’ she said, with a little gasp over the renegade nature of the speech—‘you know that Miss Anne is nobody now, and you are the one that everybody thinks of——’
Keziah drew her breath hard after this, and stopped short, more ashamed of her own turncoat utterance than could have been supposed: for indeed, she said to herself, with very conciliatory speciousness of reasoning, though Miss Anne was the one that everybody thought of, she herself had always thought most of Miss Rose, who was not a bit proud, but always ready to talk and tell you anything, and had liked her best.