Vanity Fair - Page 103/573

Who could this young woman be, I wonder? That evening a little dinner

for two persons was laid in the dining-room--when Mrs. Firkin, the

lady's maid, pushed into her mistress's apartment, and bustled about

there during the vacancy occasioned by the departure of the new

nurse--and the latter and Miss Briggs sat down to the neat little meal.

Briggs was so much choked by emotion that she could hardly take a

morsel of meat. The young person carved a fowl with the utmost

delicacy, and asked so distinctly for egg-sauce, that poor Briggs,

before whom that delicious condiment was placed, started, made a great

clattering with the ladle, and once more fell back in the most gushing

hysterical state.

"Had you not better give Miss Briggs a glass of wine?" said the person

to Mr. Bowls, the large confidential man. He did so. Briggs seized it

mechanically, gasped it down convulsively, moaned a little, and began

to play with the chicken on her plate.

"I think we shall be able to help each other," said the person with

great suavity: "and shall have no need of Mr. Bowls's kind services.

Mr. Bowls, if you please, we will ring when we want you." He went

downstairs, where, by the way, he vented the most horrid curses upon

the unoffending footman, his subordinate.

"It is a pity you take on so, Miss Briggs," the young lady said, with a

cool, slightly sarcastic, air.

"My dearest friend is so ill, and wo-o-on't see me," gurgled out Briggs

in an agony of renewed grief.

"She's not very ill any more. Console yourself, dear Miss Briggs. She

has only overeaten herself--that is all. She is greatly better. She

will soon be quite restored again. She is weak from being cupped and

from medical treatment, but she will rally immediately. Pray console

yourself, and take a little more wine."

"But why, why won't she see me again?" Miss Briggs bleated out. "Oh,

Matilda, Matilda, after three-and-twenty years' tenderness! is this the

return to your poor, poor Arabella?"

"Don't cry too much, poor Arabella," the other said (with ever so

little of a grin); "she only won't see you, because she says you don't

nurse her as well as I do. It's no pleasure to me to sit up all night.

I wish you might do it instead."

"Have I not tended that dear couch for years?" Arabella said, "and

now--"

"Now she prefers somebody else. Well, sick people have these fancies,

and must be humoured. When she's well I shall go."

"Never, never," Arabella exclaimed, madly inhaling her salts-bottle.

"Never be well or never go, Miss Briggs?" the other said, with the same

provoking good-nature. "Pooh--she will be well in a fortnight, when I

shall go back to my little pupils at Queen's Crawley, and to their

mother, who is a great deal more sick than our friend. You need not be

jealous about me, my dear Miss Briggs. I am a poor little girl without

any friends, or any harm in me. I don't want to supplant you in Miss

Crawley's good graces. She will forget me a week after I am gone: and

her affection for you has been the work of years. Give me a little

wine if you please, my dear Miss Briggs, and let us be friends. I'm

sure I want friends."