"A cent-shop, and no yeast!" quoth she; "That will never do! Who ever
heard of such a thing? Your loaf will never rise, no more than mine
will to-day. You had better shut up shop at once."
"Well," said Hepzibah, heaving a deep sigh, "perhaps I had!"
Several times, moreover, besides the above instance, her lady-like
sensibilities were seriously infringed upon by the familiar, if not
rude, tone with which people addressed her. They evidently considered
themselves not merely her equals, but her patrons and superiors. Now,
Hepzibah had unconsciously flattered herself with the idea that there
would be a gleam or halo, of some kind or other, about her person,
which would insure an obeisance to her sterling gentility, or, at
least, a tacit recognition of it. On the other hand, nothing tortured
her more intolerably than when this recognition was too prominently
expressed. To one or two rather officious offers of sympathy, her
responses were little short of acrimonious; and, we regret to say,
Hepzibah was thrown into a positively unchristian state of mind by the
suspicion that one of her customers was drawn to the shop, not by any
real need of the article which she pretended to seek, but by a wicked
wish to stare at her. The vulgar creature was determined to see for
herself what sort of a figure a mildewed piece of aristocracy, after
wasting all the bloom and much of the decline of her life apart from
the world, would cut behind a counter. In this particular case,
however mechanical and innocuous it might be at other times, Hepzibah's
contortion of brow served her in good stead.
"I never was so frightened in my life!" said the curious customer, in
describing the incident to one of her acquaintances. "She's a real old
vixen, take my word of it! She says little, to be sure; but if you
could only see the mischief in her eye!"
On the whole, therefore, her new experience led our decayed gentlewoman
to very disagreeable conclusions as to the temper and manners of what
she termed the lower classes, whom heretofore she had looked down upon
with a gentle and pitying complaisance, as herself occupying a sphere
of unquestionable superiority. But, unfortunately, she had likewise to
struggle against a bitter emotion of a directly opposite kind: a
sentiment of virulence, we mean, towards the idle aristocracy to which
it had so recently been her pride to belong. When a lady, in a
delicate and costly summer garb, with a floating veil and gracefully
swaying gown, and, altogether, an ethereal lightness that made you look
at her beautifully slippered feet, to see whether she trod on the dust
or floated in the air,--when such a vision happened to pass through
this retired street, leaving it tenderly and delusively fragrant with
her passage, as if a bouquet of tea-roses had been borne along,--then
again, it is to be feared, old Hepzibah's scowl could no longer
vindicate itself entirely on the plea of near-sightedness.