Emma, though she was the youngest, was the most vehement of all. “I know what she’s come for. She’s come to make mischief,” cried Emma. “I wouldn’t fetch mother. I wouldn’t go a step. Let her speak straight out what she’s got to say.”
“There’s reason in everything,” said Ellen. “You mayn’t mean to keep us up like friends. Just as you like, I’m sure; none of us is wanting to keep it up; but mother takes no hand in the business, and that you know as well as me.”
“Send Mrs. Welting to me,” cried Polly, waving her hand majestically. She did not condescend to any further reply. She leant back on her chair and unfastened her beloved mantle at the throat. Then she 5 got out a laced handkerchief and fanned herself. “Me that thought it was so cold,” Polly remarked to herself, “and it’s like summer!” She did not pay any further attention to the young women, who consulted together with great indignation and excitement at a little distance.
“What can she have to say to mother? I wouldn’t call mother, not if she was to sit there for a week,” said Emma, who had a presentiment as to the subject of the visit.
“Lord! just look at her in her sealskin,” interrupted Kate, who could think of nothing else.
But Ellen, who was the serious one, paused and hesitated. “We can’t tell what it may be—and if it turned out to be a job, or something she had got us from some of the Abbey ladies! She’s not bad natured,” said Ellen, full of doubts.
All this time Polly waved her handkerchief about, with its edge of lace, fanning herself. She looked at no one—she was too much elevated above all the associations of the place to deign to take any notice. Had not she always been above it? With her disengaged hand she smoothed the fur of her sealskin, rubbing it knowingly upward. She was altogether unconscious of their talk and discussion. What could they have in common with Mrs. Despard? To see her, if any of her former associates had been cool enough to notice it, was still “as good as a play.”
The upshot was, that while the others, with much ostentation of dragging their seats to the other end of the table, sat down and resumed their work with as much appearance of calm as possible, Ellen ran upstairs in obedience to her own more prudent suggestions, and reappeared shortly with her mother, a large, comely woman, who, not knowing who the visitor was, was a little expectant, hoping for a very good order—a trousseau, or perhaps mourning. “Or it might be the apartments,” Mrs. Welting said. And when she entered the workroom she made the lady a curtsey, then cried out, as her daughters had done, “Why, bless my heart, Polly! The idea of taking me in like this, you saucy things,” she cried, turning, laughing, upon the girls. But she did not get any response from these indignant young women, nor from Polly, who made no reply to her salutation, but sat still, delicately fanning herself.
Mrs. Welting stood between the two opposed parties, wondering what was the matter. Since Polly was here, she could have come only in friendship. “I’m sure I’m very glad to see you,” she said, “and looking so well and so ’andsome. And what a lovely sealskin you’ve got on!”
“Mrs. Welting,” said Polly, with great dignity, taking no notice of these friendly remarks, “I asked for you because I’ve something to say that is very particular. You don’t take much charge of the business, but it is you as one must turn to about the girls. Mrs. Welting, you mayn’t know, but there’s goings on here as always gave me a deal of annoyance. And now I’ve come to tell you they must be put a stop to. I never could endure such goings on, and I mean to put a stop to them now.”