‘I shall call for you both to-morrow about six o’clock, Hetty,’ she
said, as she deposited them at the door of their lodgings, ‘and take
you to the Alhambra. You’ll see something there more beautiful than you
have ever seen before.’
‘Oh, Nell, you _are_ good!’ cried her sister; ‘and what a lot of money
you must receive. It makes me wish that I, too, had come up to London
town when you did, and gone to service, for then I might have saved
some money to help Will furnish our rooms. I brought him nothing, you
know, Nell--not even a penny, It seems so sad, doesn’t it?’
‘What nonsense!’ replied Miss Llewellyn. ‘You brought him your true,
pure heart and your honest soul, and they are worth all the money in
the world, Hetty, and I am sure William thinks the same. Good-night. We
shall meet again to-morrow.’
And with a wave of her hand, she drove away to Grosvenor Square.
Her maid was waiting up for her, all consternation to find she had
left the house without calling in her assistance.
‘Dear me, ma’am!’ she exclaimed, as she knelt down on the floor of Miss
Llewellyn’s bedroom to unbutton her dainty boots, ‘to think you could
go out, and me not to dress you. When John told me you had left the
house, and not even taken the carriage, you might have knocked me down
with a feather. And in this dress and mantle, too! Dear, dear, wherever
did you go? Not to the theatre, surely?’
‘Yes, I did,’ responded her mistress. ‘I took some young friends from
the country with me to the Adelphi; and you see, Susan, the fact is,
they are not used to fashionable dressing, so I thought I would not
make them feel uncomfortable by being smarter than themselves.’
‘Many ladies think the same,’ remarked the maid; ‘though I don’t hold
with it, for it’s a real pleasure to look at such dresses as yours,
even if one can’t have ’em for oneself.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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