Page 193 - vanity-fair

with the same provoking good-nature. ‘Pooh—she will be
well in a fortnight, when I shall go back to my little pupils
at Queen’s Crawley, and to their mother, who is a great deal
more sick than our friend. You need not be jealous about
me, my dear Miss Briggs. I am a poor little girl without any
friends, or any harm in me. I don’t want to supplant you in
Miss Crawley’s good graces. She will forget me a week af-
ter I am gone: and her affection for you has been the work
of years. Give me a little wine if you please, my dear Miss
Briggs, and let us be friends. I’m sure I want friends.’
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 fickle-
ness 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 de-
scend the stairs, and the clink of the spoon and gruel-basin
the neglected female carried.

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