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A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY 27
Brandon never offended her by hard words ; insulted her by cruel
scorn, such as she met with from her mother and her sisters ; there
was a quiet manner about the man quite different to any that she
had before seen amongst the acquaintances of her family ; and if he
assumed a tone of superiority in his conversation with her and the
rest, Caroline felt that he was their superior, and as such admired
and respected him.
What happens when in the innocent bosom of a girl of sixteen
such sensations arise ? What has happened ever since the world
began ?
I have said that Miss Caroline had no friend in the world but
her father, and must here take leave to recall that assertion ;—a
friend she most certainly had, and that was honest Becky, the
smutty maid, whose name has been mentioned before. Miss Caroline
had learned, in the course of a life spent under the tyranny of
her mamma, some of the notions of the latter, and would have been
very much offended to call Becky her friend : but friends, in fact,
they were ; and a great comfort it was for Caroline to descend to
the calm kitchen from the stormy back-parlour, and there vent some
of her little woes to the compassionate servant of all work.
When Mrs. Gann went out with her daughters, Becky would
take her work and come and keep Miss Caroline company ; and
if the truth must be told, the greatest enjoyment the pair used to
have was in these afternoons, when they read together out of the
precious greasy marble-covered volumes that Mrs. Gann was in
the habit of fetching from the library. Many and many a tale
had the pair so gone through. I can see them over " Manfrone;
or the One-handed Monk"—the room dark, the street silent, the
hour ten—the tall red lurid candlewick waggling down, the flame
flickering pale upon Miss Caroline's pale face as she read out, and
lighting up honest Becky's goggling eyes, who sat silent, her work
in her lap ; she had not done a stitch of it for an hour. As the
trap-door slowly opens, and the scowling Alonzo, bending over the
sleeping Imoinda, draws his pistol, cocks it, looks well if the
priming be right, places it then to the sleeper's ear, and—thunderunder-under—down
fall the snuffers ! Becky has had them in
her hand for ten minutes, afraid to use them. Up starts Caroline,
and flings the book back into her mamma's basket. It is that lady
returned with her daughters from a tea-party, where two young
gents from London have been mighty genteel indeed.
For the sentimental too, as well as for the terrible, Miss
Caroline and the cook had a strong predilection, and had wept
their poor eyes out over " Thaddeus of Warsaw " and the " Scottish
Chiefs." Fortified by the examples drawn from those instructive