“And he?”
“Oh, he smiled, and asked me if I had any natural aptitude.”
“Yes?”
“I answered, ‘None, but that no doubt it would come.’”
The corners of Mrs. Darcy’s mouth have got so entirely beyond her control that she can only turn one imploring appeal for help to Lavinia, who advances to the rescue.
“And then?” she asks, with praiseworthy gravity.
“Oh, then he shrugged his shoulders and answered drily, ‘I have had three thousand applications from ladies, from duchesses to washerwomen, which I have been obliged to refuse. I am afraid that I must make yours the three thousand and first;’ and so he bowed me out.”
She ends, her pink self-complacency unimpaired, and both the other women look at her in a wonder not untouched with admiration. Neither of them succeeds in making vocal any expression of regret.
“It is one more instance of the red tapeism that reigns in every department of our military administration,” says Miss Prince, not missing the lacking sympathy, and with an accent of melancholy superiority. “Next time I shall know better than to ask for any official recognition.” After a slight pause, “It is a bitter disappointment, of course; more acute to me naturally than it could be to any one else.”
With this not obscure intimation of the end she had had in view in tendering her services to the troops in South Africa, Féodorovna departs. The two depositaries of her confidence look at each other with faces of unbridled mirth as soon as her long back is turned; but there is more of humorous geniality and less of impartial disgust in the matron’s than the maid’s.