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I said, 'Change it? This is all I have.'
'All you have? Good gracious. I am weary of it already. What were you used to wearing for Lady Alice, who was so nice? Did she never pass any of her own dresses on to you?'
I felt— and I think I was right in feeling it— that Gentleman had let me down a bit here, sending me off to Briar with just the one good gown. I said,
'Well, the fact is, miss, Lady Alice was kind as an angel; but she was also rather near.
She kept my frocks back, to take to India for her girl there.'
Maud blinked her dark eyes and looked sorry. She said,
'Is that how ladies treat their maids, in London?'
'Only the near ones, miss,' I answered.
Then she said, 'Well, I have nothing to be near for, here. You must and shall have another gown, to spend your mornings in. And perhaps another besides that, for you to change into when— Well, say we ever had a visitor?'
She hid her face behind the door of her press. She said,
'Now, I believe we are of a similar size. Here are two or three dresses, look, that I never wear and shan't miss. You like your skirts long, I see. My uncle does not care to see me in a long skirt, he believes long skirts unhealthy. But he shan't mind, of course, about
you. You need only let down this hem a little here. You can do that, of course?'
Well, I was certainly used to taking stitches out; and I could sew a straight seam when I needed to. I said, 'Thank you, miss.' She held a dress before me. It was a queer thing of orange velvet, with fringes and a wide skirt. It looked like it had been blown together by a strong wind in a ladies' tailor's. She studied me, and then said,
'Oh, try it, Susan, do! Look, I shall help you.' She came close, and began to undress me. 'See, I can do it, quite as well as you. Now I am your maid, and you are the mistress!'
She laughed, a little nervously, all the time she worked. 'Why, look here in the glass,'
she said at last. 'We might be sisters!'
She had tugged my old brown dress off me and put the queer orange one over my head, and she made me stand before the glass while she saw to the hooks. 'Breathe in,'
she said. 'Breathe harder! The gown grips tight, but will give you the figure of a lady.'
Of course, her own waist was narrow, and she was taller by an inch. My hair was the darker. We did not look like sisters, we just both looked like frights. My dress showed all my ankle. If a boy from the Borough had seen me then, I should have fallen down and died.
But there were no Borough boys to see me; and no Borough girls, either. And it was a very good velvet. I stood, plucking at the fringes on the skirt, while Maud ran to her jewel box for a brooch, that she fastened to my bosom, tilting her head to see how it looked. Then there came a knock on the parlour door.
'There's Margaret,' she said, her face quite pink. She called, 'Come here to the dressing- room, Margaret!'
Margaret came and made a curtsey, looking straight at me. She said,
'I have just come for your tray, mi— Oh! Miss Smith! Is it you, there? I should never 65
have known you from the mistress, I'm sure!'
She blushed, and Maud— who was standing in the shadow of the bed-curtain— looked girlish, putting her hand before her mouth. She shivered with laughter, and her dark eyes shone.
'Suppose,' she said, when Margaret had gone, 'suppose Mr Rivers were to do what Margaret did, and mistake you for me? What would we do, then?'
Again she laughed and shivered. I gazed at the glass, and smiled.
For it was something, wasn't it, to be taken for a lady?
It's what my mother would have wanted.
And anyway, I was to get the pick of all her dresses and her jewels, in the end. I was only starting early. I kept the orange gown and, while she went to her uncle, sat turning the hem down and letting out the bodice. I wasn't about to do myself an injury, for the sake of a sixteen- inch waist.
'Now, do we look handsome?' said Maud, when I fetched her back. She stood and looked me over, then brushed at her own skirts. 'But here is dust,' she cried, 'from my uncle's shelves! Oh! The books, the terrible books!'
She was almost weeping, and wringing her hands.
I took the dust away, and wished I could tell her she was fretting for nothing. She might be dressed in a sack. She might have a face like a coal- heaver's. So long as there was fifteen thousand in the bank marked Miss Maud Lilly, then Gentleman would want her.
It was almost awful to see her, knowing what I knew, pretending I knew nothing; and with another kind of girl, it might have been comical. I would say, 'Are you poorly, miss? Shall I fetch you something? Shall I bring you the little glass, to look at your face in?'— and she would answer, 'Poorly? I am only rather cold, and walking to keep my blood warm.' And, 'A glass, Sue? Why should I need a glass?'
'I thought you were looking at your own face, miss, more than was usual.'
'My own face! And why should I be interested in doing that?'
'I can't say, miss, I'm sure.'
I knew his train was due at Marlow at four o'clock, and that William Inker had been sent to meet it, as he had been sent for me. At three, Maud said she would sit at the window and work at her sewing there, where the light was good. Of course, it was nearly dark then; but I said nothing. There was a little padded seat beside the rattling panes and mouldy sand-bags, it was the coldest place in the room; but she kept there for an hour and a half, with a shawl about her, shivering, squinting at her stitches, and sneaking sly little glances at the road to the house.
I thought, if that wasn't love, then I was a Dutchman; and if it was love, then lovers were pigeons and geese, and I was glad I was not one of them.
At last she put her fingers to her heart and gave a stifled sort of cry. She had seen the light coming, on William Inker's trap. That made her get up and come away from the window, and stand at the fire and press her hands together. Then came the sound of the horse on the gravel. I said, 'Will that be Mr Rivers, miss?' and she answered, 'Mr Rivers? Is the day so late as that? Well, I suppose it is. How pleased my uncle will be!'
Her uncle saw him first. She said, 'Perhaps he will send for me, to bid Mr Rivers 66
welcome.— How does my skirt sit now? Had I not rather wear the grey?'
But Mr Lilly did not send for her. We heard voices and closing doors in the rooms below, but it was another hour again before a parlourmaid came, to pass on the message that Mr Rivers was arrived.
'And is Mr Rivers made comfortable, in his old room?' said Maud.
'Yes, miss.'
And Mr Rivers will be rather tired, I suppose, after his journey?'
Mr Rivers sent to say that he was tolerable tired, and looked forward to seeing Miss Lilly with her uncle, at supper. He would not think of disturbing Miss Lilly before then.
'I see,' she said when she heard that. Then she bit her lip. 'Please to tell Mr Rivers that she would not think it any sort of disturbance, to be visited by him, in her parlour, before the supper-hour came . . .'
She went on like this for a minute and a half, falling over her words, and blushing; and finally the parlourmaid got the message and went off. She was gone a quarter of an hour. When she came back, she had Gentleman with her.
He stepped into the room, and did not look at me at first. His eyes were all for Maud.
He said,
'Miss Lilly, you are kind to receive me here, all travel-stained and tumbled as I am.
That is like you!'
His voice was gentle. As for the stains— well, there wasn't a mark upon him, I guessed he had gone quickly to his room and changed his coat. His hair was sleek and his whiskers tidy; he wore one modest little ring on his smallest finger, but apart from that his hands were bare and very clean.
He looked what he was meant to be— a handsome, nice- minded gentleman. When he turned to me at last, I found myself making him a curtsey and was almost shy.