Page 191 - vanity-fair

hole during the most part of the interview); and the Captain
coming out, curling his mustachios, mounted the black
charger pawing among the straw, to the admiration of the
little blackguard boys collected in the street. He looked in at
the dining-room window, managing his horse, which cur-
vetted and capered beautifully—for one instant the young
person might be seen at the window, when her figure van-
ished, and, doubtless, she went upstairs again to resume the
affecting duties of benevolence.
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 oc-
casioned 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 hys-
terical 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 convul-
sively, 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 per-
son with great suavity: ‘and shall have no need of Mr. Bowls’s

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