Upon this topic Bonnybell could have shed some light, but as the question took an ejaculatory shape she did not think it necessary to answer it.
Although Lady Bletchley had alluded to her future change of house as a corvée, her haste to display the proportions of her new mansion—which deserved that pompous name for better reasons than the prosaic technical one of possessing a backstairs—to Bonnybell, took precedence of even her eagerness to set Miss Ransome to work; and in enumerating the length of feet to which the ballroom ran, and giving the genealogies of the cabinets and chimney-pieces, she forgot to be bored. Her companion’s mouth was filled with praise and thanksgiving, and her heart with upbraiding wonder at the ways of Providence. Fancy meanwhile sported among the alterations and improvements—all in atrocious taste—which she herself would make, were Tom’s affection blessedly to take a less amorous tone and he be moved to adopt and make her his heiress.
While awaiting this happy consummation she had to content herself with receiving flattering comments upon her intelligent sympathy, as contrasted with the block-like manner in which Miss Sloggett—Felicity’s secretary—had treated the wonders of French art and delicate eighteenth-century luxury displayed before her unappreciative eyes. In point of fact, the worthy lady, with a desire as sincere as Bonnybell’s to hit her employer’s mood, but a tact less sure, had expressed only an aspiration in imagined accordance with Lady Bletchley’s well-published philanthropy, that Lord Bletchley might be persuaded to sell all these useless superfluities for the benefit of the East End.
This naïve proposal to return to methods inculcated by the Teaching beside the Sea of Galilee did not meet with the reception it expected, and Miss Sloggett was shown nothing more. Even the present exhibition to a much more understanding spectator had to be scamped.
“You are a delightful person to show things to, and there are any number more treasures for you to see”—the poor fellow was a well-known collector—“but the meeting is to be at four, and I have a good deal to arrange in connection with it beforehand. You will help me, I know. One is so cramped for space in Hill Street!”
The tone of resigned contempt in which the last clause of her speech was uttered showed that Felicity’s ideas had thus early expanded to the size of her new surroundings, and Bonnybell gave a sardonic inward chuckle. But she threw herself with such ardour and appetite into the arrangements for the function indicated, and showed such mingled capacity and suavity in her manner of assigning seats to the company when it arrived, as to draw upon her from Lady Bletchley further comparisons of an invidiously favourable character with the blundering Sloggett.
The meeting was that of a Ladies’ Debating Society, held by turns at the house of each of the members, and was of a now not uncommon type. The subject of discussion was “Domestic Servants. Whether they need culture. If so, how we are to give it them?” It opened with the reading of a fairly practical paper, much interrupted by voluble members. One large woman with a lisp, and apparently enfranchised from the bondage of corsets, was irrepressible in suggestions—not valuable—and autobiographical experiences. A second joked rather scathingly. A third was sensible and serious, but dull. The fourth, and worst, a very foolish vessel, still more autobiographic, telling at great length of how she almost daily personally conducted her servants to the British Museum and the Tower. And when it was objected that this course must lead to difficulties as to the discharge of their duties, answered threadbarely, that if you wanted to do good you must make up your mind to sacrifice your own convenience to a certain extent, and that she kept a good many servants. The reader of the paper rejoined politely, but sarcastically, that perhaps those who had smaller households would suggest how the objection was to be met. And thereupon so many fair ones complied at once—the irrepressible obesity leading the van—that the chairwoman, Lady Bletchley, had to ring her bell repeatedly to call them to order.
“Perhaps some of the members at the lower end of the room will let us hear what they have to say on the subject,” Felicity suggested, when at length she was able to make herself audible, and looking encouragingly at half a dozen silent women. “Those at this end have taken up so much time in the discussion that the others have not had a chance.”
But the silent women remained silent, and the localized garrulity continued to rage fiercely, turning its boiling stream into the channel of the G.F.S.; the foolish matron who announced the largeness of her establishment taking up her tale again, and going into details almost as intimate as, though less indelicate than, Mrs. Cluppins, when she appeared as witness for the prosecution in the trial of Bardell v. Pickwick, of her domestic economy.
“It takes a good deal out of one,” Felicity ejaculated, when at the close of the meeting—which every one present agreed had been a particularly good and helpful one—she and Bonnybell retired to Lady Bletchley’s private room, while the drawing-rooms were being restored to their normal state. “But, as you see, it is well worth it.”