Vanity Fair - Page 8/573

When Miss Sharp had performed the heroical act mentioned in the last

chapter, and had seen the Dixonary, flying over the pavement of the

little garden, fall at length at the feet of the astonished Miss

Jemima, the young lady's countenance, which had before worn an almost

livid look of hatred, assumed a smile that perhaps was scarcely more

agreeable, and she sank back in the carriage in an easy frame of mind,

saying--"So much for the Dixonary; and, thank God, I'm out of Chiswick."

Miss Sedley was almost as flurried at the act of defiance as Miss

Jemima had been; for, consider, it was but one minute that she had left

school, and the impressions of six years are not got over in that space

of time. Nay, with some persons those awes and terrors of youth last

for ever and ever. I know, for instance, an old gentleman of

sixty-eight, who said to me one morning at breakfast, with a very

agitated countenance, "I dreamed last night that I was flogged by Dr.

Raine." Fancy had carried him back five-and-fifty years in the course

of that evening. Dr. Raine and his rod were just as awful to him in

his heart, then, at sixty-eight, as they had been at thirteen. If the

Doctor, with a large birch, had appeared bodily to him, even at the age

of threescore and eight, and had said in awful voice, "Boy, take down

your pant--"? Well, well, Miss Sedley was exceedingly alarmed at this

act of insubordination.

"How could you do so, Rebecca?" at last she said, after a pause.

"Why, do you think Miss Pinkerton will come out and order me back to

the black-hole?" said Rebecca, laughing.

"No: but--"

"I hate the whole house," continued Miss Sharp in a fury. "I hope I

may never set eyes on it again. I wish it were in the bottom of the

Thames, I do; and if Miss Pinkerton were there, I wouldn't pick her

out, that I wouldn't. O how I should like to see her floating in the

water yonder, turban and all, with her train streaming after her, and

her nose like the beak of a wherry."

"Hush!" cried Miss Sedley.

"Why, will the black footman tell tales?" cried Miss Rebecca, laughing.

"He may go back and tell Miss Pinkerton that I hate her with all my

soul; and I wish he would; and I wish I had a means of proving it, too.

For two years I have only had insults and outrage from her. I have been

treated worse than any servant in the kitchen. I have never had a

friend or a kind word, except from you. I have been made to tend the

little girls in the lower schoolroom, and to talk French to the Misses,

until I grew sick of my mother tongue. But that talking French to Miss

Pinkerton was capital fun, wasn't it? She doesn't know a word of

French, and was too proud to confess it. I believe it was that which

made her part with me; and so thank Heaven for French. Vive la France!

Vive l'Empereur! Vive Bonaparte!"