tippling over by seizing the drawing-room door-handle, and then, as he turned and swung by it, sending the blood tingling into my cheeks by announcing—

“Mrs and Miss Bosom.”

Any one with a heart beating beneath her own can fancy our feelings. Of course I am aware that some unfeeling, ribald men—I do not include thee, oh, Achille!—would have turned the wretch’s blunder into a subject for jest; but thanks to the goddess of Bonheur, there was none of the race present, and Mrs Fortesquieu de Blount came mincing forward, smiling most benignly in her pet turban.

A dreadful old creature—I shall never forget her! Always dressed in black satin, a skin parting front, false teeth, and a thick gold chain hung over her shoulders; while the shocking old thing always thrust everything artificial that she wore right under your eyes, so that you could not fail to see how deceptive she was.

She was soon deep in conversation with mamma; while I looked wearily round the room, which was full to overflowing with all sorts of fancy work, so that you could not stir an inch without being hooked, or caught, or upsetting something. There were antimacassars, sofa-cushions, fire-screens, bead-mats, wool-mats, crochet-mats, coverings for the sofa, piano, and chimney-piece, candle-screens, curtains, ottomans, pen wipers—things enough, in short, to have set up a fancy fair. And, of course, I knew well enough what they all meant—presents from pupils who had been foolish enough to spend their money in buying the materials, and then working them up to ornament the old tabby’s drawing-room.

Well, I don’t care. It’s the truth; she was a horrible old tabby, with nothing genuine or true about her, or I would not speak so disrespectfully. She did not care a bit for her pupils, more than to value them according to how much they brought her in per annum, so that the drawing-room boarders—there were no parlour boarders there, nothing so common—stood first in her estimation.

I felt so vexed that first day, sitting in the drawing-room, I could have pulled off the old thing’s turban; and I’m sure that if I had the false front would have come with it. There she was, pointing out the different crayon-drawings upon the wall; and mamma, who cannot tell a decent sketch from a bad one, lifting up her hand and pretending to be in ecstasies.

Do you mean to tell me that they did not both know how they were deceiving one another? Stuff! Of course they did, and they both 

 Prev. P 9/148 next