"Lady Harriet?" said Molly, suddenly enlightened by the word
"condescending."
"Yes. Why, how did you guess it? But, after all, her call, at any
rate in the first instance, was upon you. Oh, dear Molly! if you're
not in a hurry to go to bed, let me sit down quietly and tell you all
about it; for my heart jumps into my mouth still when I think of how
I was caught. She--that is, her ladyship--left the carriage at 'The
George,' and took to her feet to go shopping--just as you or I may
have done many a time in our lives. And sister was taking her forty
winks; and I was sitting with my gown up above my knees and my feet
on the fender, pulling out my grandmother's lace which I'd been
washing. The worst has yet to be told. I'd taken off my cap, for I
thought it was getting dusk and no one would come, and there was I in
my black silk skull-cap, when Nancy put her head in, and whispered,
'There's a lady downstairs--a real grand one, by her talk;' and in
there came my Lady Harriet, so sweet and pretty in her ways, it was
some time before I remembered I had never a cap on. Sister never
wakened; or never roused up, so to say. She says she thought it was
Nancy bringing in the tea when she heard some one moving; for her
ladyship, as soon as she saw the state of the case, came and knelt
down on the rug by me, and begged my pardon so prettily for having
followed Nancy upstairs without waiting for permission; and was so
taken by my old lace, and wanted to know how I washed it, and where
you were, and when you'd be back, and when the happy couple would be
back: till sister wakened--she's always a little bit put out, you
know, when she first wakens from her afternoon nap,--and, without
turning her head to see who it was, she said, quite sharp,--'Buzz,
buzz, buzz! When will you learn that whispering is more fidgeting
than talking out loud? I've not been able to sleep at all for the
chatter you and Nancy have been keeping up all this time.' You know
that was a little fancy of sister's, for she'd been snoring away as
naturally as could be. So I went to her, and leant over her, and said
in a low voice,--
"'Sister, it's her ladyship and me that has been conversing.'
"'Ladyship here, ladyship there! have you lost your wits, Phoebe,
that you talk such nonsense--and in your skull-cap, too!'