Mathilde pretended indifference, but she thought Maria the nicest girl she had met in England, far more _chic_ than Jessie; and when she heard that her new friend longed to be a lady’s maid, she offered to coach her in the art. Maria was gushingly grateful, for though she had (she said) already acted as maid to one or two ladies, they had not been "swells" like Lady Henry, and lessons from Mathilde would be of inestimable value. "I suppose," she went on coaxingly, "that if I showed you I could do hair nicely, and understood what was wanted of a lady’s maid, you wouldn’t be took ill, and give me a chance to try my hand on Lady Henry? Practice on her Ladyship would be worth a lot of lessons, wouldn’t it? My goodness! I’d give all my savings for such a chance in a house like this! Think of the help it would be to me afterwards to say I’d been understudy, as you might call it, to a real expert like Mathilde, Lady Henry Borrowdaile’s own maid, and given great satisfaction in the part! It might mean a good place for me. I ain’t jokin’, mademoiselle. I’ve got twenty-five sovereigns saved up, and if you’ll have neuralgia so bad you can’t lift your head from the pillow for three or four days, those twenty-five sovereigns are yours." "_Mais_, for me to have ze neuralgia, it do not make that milady take you for my place," said the laughing Mathilde. "No, but leave that to me. You shall have the money just the same." "All right," said Mathilde, giggling, scarce believing that her friend was in earnest. "I have ze neuralgia _demain_--to-morrow." Joan sprang up and went to the new tin box. She bent over it for a moment, with her back to Mathilde; then she turned, with a stocking in her hand--a stocking fat in the foot, and tied round the ankle with a bit of ribbon. "Count what’s there," she exclaimed, emptying the stocking in Mathilde’s lap. There were gold and silver, and even a little copper. Altogether, the sum amounted to that which Maria had named, and a few shillings over.