Miss Emelina Tippet was neither tall nor stiff, nor angular nor bony; on the contrary, she was little and plump, and not bad-looking. And people often wondered why Miss Tippet was Miss Tippet and was not Mrs Somebody-else. Whatever the reason was, Miss Tippet never divulged it, so we won’t speculate about it here.
“A note, boy, from Mr Auberly?” exclaimed Miss Tippet, with a beaming smile; “give it me—thank you.”
She opened it and read attentively, while Master Willie glanced round the parlour and took mental notes. Miss Emma Ward sat down on a stool in the window, ostensibly to “do sums,” but really to draw faces, all of which bore a strong caricatured resemblance to Willie, at whom she glanced slyly over the top of her slate.
Matty remained standing at the door to hear what the note was about. She did not pretend to busy herself about anything. There was no subterfuge in Matty. She had been Miss Tippet’s confidential servant before entering the service of Mr Auberly, and her extremely short stay in Beverly Square had not altered that condition. She had come to feel that she had a right to know all Miss Tippet’s affairs, and so waited for information.
“Ah!” exclaimed Miss Tippet, still reading, “yes; ‘get him a situation in your brother’s office,’ (oh, certainly, I’ll be sure to get that); ‘he seems smart, I might almost say impu—’ Ahem! Yes, well—.”
“Boy,” said Miss Tippet, turning suddenly to Willie, “your name is William Willders, I believe?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, William, Mr Auberly, my relative, asks me to get you into my brother’s—my brother’s, what’s ’is name—office. Of course, I shall be happy to try. I am always extremely happy to do anything for—yes, I suppose of course you can write, and, what d’ye call it—count—you can do arithmetic?”
“Yes, ma’am,” replied Willie.
“And you can spell—eh? I hope you can spell, Edward, a—I mean Thomas—is it, or William?”