Mistress Maud sneered, and examined a third jelly, which she was reluctantly compelled to quit by a summons from her lady.
"What robe would your ladyship desire?" she inquired of Lady Frances, whose eyes were red with weeping, and who appeared astonishingly careless upon a point that usually occupied much of her attention. "Would your ladyship like the white and silver, with the pearl loopings and diamond stomacher?"
"What need to trouble me as to the robe?" at length she replied with an irritability of manner to which she too often yielded. "Why do I entertain two lazy hussies, but to see after my robings, and save me the trouble of thinking thereon?—Go to!—you have no brain."
Maud and her assistant laid out the dress and the jewels, yet Lady Frances was ill satisfied.
"Said I not that the stomacher needed lengthening?—The point is not a point, but a round!—Saw one ever the like?—It is as square as a dove's tail, instead of tapering off like a parroquet's!"
"Did your ladyship mean," said the elder of the bewildered girls, "that the stomacher was square or round?"
She perfectly agreed with her mistress in thinking a stomacher a matter of great importance, but was most sadly perplexed that Lady Frances should so markedly object to that which she had so warmly praised on a former occasion.
"Square or round!" repeated Lady Frances impetuously—"neither:—it is to be peaked—thus!"
The poor maid, in her eagerness to hold the stomacher for her lady's inspection, let it fall—the principal jewel-band caught in a hook, and was scattered in fragments upon the ground. This was more than Lady Frances could bear, and she turned both women out of the room, commanding them to send Barbara in their stead. The little Puritan had been weeping plentifully, but when she came, Lady Frances appeared to have forgotten her wrath, and greeted her with much gentleness.
"Your mistress, my pretty maid—is she dressed?"