“She had hemmed one side of the handkerchief, and we had conversed on a great variety of topics, when the weather began to clear up, and the sun to shine in at the windows. Rachel rose at once to depart. I said that I was quite sure it must be dreadfully wet under foot, and that I was certain she was thinly shod.
“‘Not very,’ she said.
“But I insisted on satisfying myself, and would not be content until she had suffered to peep out beneath the hem of her gown one of the neatest little patent-leather slippers I had ever seen in my life. I said that they were very dainty little things, but altogether fine-weather shoes, and not meant for wet decks. But I remembered presently that I had seen in her hand, when she entered the room, a pair of India-rubber overshoes, and I reminded her of them.
“‘They are my mistress’s,’ she said: ‘I had been desired to fetch them from the shop.’
“‘Wear them,’ I said, ‘all the same—they will be none the worse, and will keep your little feet dry.’
“‘But how can I?’ she answered with a smile; ‘they will not fit me at all.’
“‘Too small?’ I said, laughing.
“‘Yes, sir,’ she said, with another smile, even more charming than the first. I told her that I should not be satisfied until I had decided that point for myself; and at last I persuaded her to try. The little rogue knew well the result. Her feet were quite lost in them.
“If I have a weakness in the world, my good fellow, it is in favor of pretty feet and ankles; so, when Rachel insisted on taking her departure, I hobbled as well as I could to the window to see her pick her way across the puddles in the Close. I satisfied myself that the girl’s ankles were as undeniable as her feet; and she was unequivocally bien chaussée. I could not help thinking of this long after she was gone. And then it occurred to me that Julia Harper was certainly on a rather large scale. She had a good figure of its kind, and she had fine eyes; but Rachel’s were quite as bright, and much softer; and as for all the essentials of a graceful and feminine figure, the mistress’s was far inferior to the maid’s. I kept thinking of this all the evening, and after I had gone to bed. And I thought, too, of the very unpleasant specimen of Julia’s insincerity which had betrayed itself in the case of the slippers. But it is astonishing how little it pained me to think that Julia might not be really attached to me, and that our almost engagement might come to naught after all.
“I am afraid that if I dreamt at all about female beauty that night, it was less in the style of the mistress than the maid. Morning came, and with it an eager hope that I should see Rachel in the course of the day; but she did not appear. I never kept such long watches in my life. I got horribly impatient. I left my couch, and seated myself at the window, with a sort of forlorn hope that I might see Rachel pass; but I saw only a distressing number of clumsy feet and thick ankles, and no one remotely resembling Miss Harper’s spicy little maid. Night closed in upon me savage as a bear. But the next day was a more auspicious one. Looking prettier than ever, Rachel came with a note from her mistress. I was in no hurry to open it, you may be sure. I asked Rachel a great number of questions, and was especially solicitous on the score of the wet feet, which I feared had been the result of her last homeward voyage from my lodgings. She had by this time habituated herself to talk to me in a much more free and unembarrassed manner than when first she came to my apartments; and the more she talked to me, the more charmed I was; for she expressed herself so well, had such a pleasant voice, and delivered such sensible opinions, that I soon began to think that the mental qualifications of the mistress (none of the highest, be it said) were by no means superior to those of the maid. Indeed, to tell you the truth, my good fellow, I was falling in love with little Rachel as fast as I possibly could.