’Tis time, indeed, that I brought this letter to a close; but there’s one or two things I must first put down, though at the risque of my dear girl’s thinking me a sad tedious scribbler. I have found the way, Amelia, into my stepmother’s favour—a thing that would be altogether charming, were it not that the means thereto are such as, to borrow a phrase from our great but neglected British poet, would leave me poor indeed. But you shall hear. On Saturday, then, my trunks, which had been in the hold of the Orford, were brought to the house, and I was extraordinary well pleased, for I had feared to be forced to stay from church the next day for want of a suitable gown. Mrs Freyne was to the full as glad as I, and shut herself up with me in my chamber to see the trunks unpacked, telling the banyan, who performs such services of ceremony here, to deny her to her visitants, using the phrase “The door is shut,” which is so understood by everybody. Well, as Marianna unfolded and laid out one gown after another, I could see that Mrs Freyne became less and less contented, and at last she burst out with—
“I vow, miss, you have a prodigious great store of clothes. Pray how much did Mr Freyne send home for providing you with ’em?”
“I don’t know, madam,” I said, and I was thankful to be able to say so. “The gentlewomen at Holly-tree House were bid to provide them, and account to Mr Freyne, within a certain sum.”
“You might have been coming out as a married woman,” says my stepmother, smoothing the satin of my white quilted petticoat. “I never saw a young Miss so absurdly well provided. Look you there now; you have three—four—silk night-gowns, and questionless a dozen or two of muslin ones.”
“No, madam, I have none of muslin. Mrs Abigail said they would be made cheaper here, and the limit of the money not exceeded.”
Mrs Freyne’s countenance cleared. “Why then,” she said, “I’ll show you what’s to be done. You shall give me two of these silk night-gowns, and I’ll have half a dozen muslin ones made for you from stuff that I have lying by, and so you’ll be properly dressed and not over-furnished.”
“As you please, madam,” said I. But I was glad she left me the white damask and the yellow lustring, and took the blue and the green, which, as you know, I was not so pleased with. But I trembled when I saw her considering my blush-coloured paduasoy with the silver lace. If she had laid hands on it, I must have ventured to suggest to her that the hue was not becoming to ladies of such a delicate complexion as hers, but only to brown girls with a high colour, like your Sylvia. But she passed it over, and after requesting of me such trifles as an apron or two and a French necklace,[17] came to my head-clothes.
“Indeed you’re not badly off for lace!” she said. “Three heads,[18] as I’m alive—two Brussels and a Mechlin. I’m sure you can’t want this Brussels mob, miss.”
“Oh, pray, madam,” I said in a great taking, “you are welcome to the other two, but leave me that one.”
“I think it’s very ill-natured in you, miss, to say that when you know I have set my heart on it. How can you be so unamiable? I like to see a young woman facetious[19] to those about her.”