Vanity Fair - Page 104/573

The placable and soft-hearted Briggs speechlessly pushed out her hand

at this appeal; but she felt the desertion most keenly for all that,

and bitterly, bitterly moaned the fickleness of her Matilda. At the end

of half an hour, the meal over, Miss Rebecca Sharp (for such,

astonishing to state, is the name of her who has been described

ingeniously as "the person" hitherto), went upstairs again to her

patient's rooms, from which, with the most engaging politeness, she

eliminated poor Firkin. "Thank you, Mrs. Firkin, that will quite do;

how nicely you make it! I will ring when anything is wanted." "Thank

you"; and Firkin came downstairs in a tempest of jealousy, only the

more dangerous because she was forced to confine it in her own bosom.

Could it be the tempest which, as she passed the landing of the first

floor, blew open the drawing-room door? No; it was stealthily opened by

the hand of Briggs. Briggs had been on the watch. Briggs too well heard

the creaking Firkin descend the stairs, and the clink of the spoon and

gruel-basin the neglected female carried.

"Well, Firkin?" says she, as the other entered the apartment. "Well,

Jane?"

"Wuss and wuss, Miss B.," Firkin said, wagging her head.

"Is she not better then?"

"She never spoke but once, and I asked her if she felt a little more

easy, and she told me to hold my stupid tongue. Oh, Miss B., I never

thought to have seen this day!" And the water-works again began to

play.

"What sort of a person is this Miss Sharp, Firkin? I little thought,

while enjoying my Christmas revels in the elegant home of my firm

friends, the Reverend Lionel Delamere and his amiable lady, to find a

stranger had taken my place in the affections of my dearest, my still

dearest Matilda!" Miss Briggs, it will be seen by her language, was of

a literary and sentimental turn, and had once published a volume of

poems--"Trills of the Nightingale"--by subscription.

"Miss B., they are all infatyated about that young woman," Firkin

replied. "Sir Pitt wouldn't have let her go, but he daredn't refuse

Miss Crawley anything. Mrs. Bute at the Rectory jist as bad--never

happy out of her sight. The Capting quite wild about her. Mr. Crawley

mortial jealous. Since Miss C. was took ill, she won't have nobody near

her but Miss Sharp, I can't tell for where nor for why; and I think

somethink has bewidged everybody."

Rebecca passed that night in constant watching upon Miss Crawley; the

next night the old lady slept so comfortably, that Rebecca had time for

several hours' comfortable repose herself on the sofa, at the foot of

her patroness's bed; very soon, Miss Crawley was so well that she sat

up and laughed heartily at a perfect imitation of Miss Briggs and her

grief, which Rebecca described to her. Briggs' weeping snuffle, and her

manner of using the handkerchief, were so completely rendered that Miss

Crawley became quite cheerful, to the admiration of the doctors when

they visited her, who usually found this worthy woman of the world,

when the least sickness attacked her, under the most abject depression

and terror of death.