"A FRENCH LADY."

The sisters agreed to adjourn forthwith, but just at the moment of departing a hat was discovered which was in every way what was required, so they proceeded straight to the remnant counter where a mountain of material was being tossed about hither and thither by a crowd of purchasers three rows deep.

"First catch your hare, then cook it," so runs the old proverb, and in this case the adventure was by no means concluded when the selection was made. It was necessary to pay for what you had bought, and that necessitated a wait of a long half-hour before anyone could be induced to receive the money. The glove department was, if possible, still more crowded, and it was a relief to see through a doorway a vista of a great hall filled with cases of beautiful ready-made dresses, where, despite the presence of a goodly number of customers, there was still enough room to move about, without pushing a way with your elbows.

"Let us come in here and breathe again!" cried Bridgie. "I don't think I was ever so tired during my life, but I'm enjoying myself terribly.

It's so exciting, isn't it, Pixie?--and those blouse lengths are quite elegant. They will take a lot of making, though. Wouldn't it be nice if I could buy a dress all ready, and be spared the work?"

"It would!" agreed Pixie. "Tell one of the ladies what you're wanting, and maybe she'll have the very thing. Here is one coming this way.

Speak to her."

Bridgie cleared her throat nervously as she made her request, for the show-woman was a most impressive figure, tall, incredibly slight, with elaborately arranged hair, satin skirts sweeping the ground, and a manner that was quite painfully superior. She swept a scrutinising glance over the sisters as she listened to the request for a simple house dress, volunteered the information that, "Our cheapest costumes are in this stand!" in a blighting tone, and began pulling out the skirts and exhibiting them in professional manner.

"That is a very nice little dress, madam, very neatly made--quite in the latest style! Too light? We are selling a great many light shades this season.--Do you care for this colour? This is a very well-cut gown.

Too dark? I am afraid I have not many medium shades.--Here is a pretty gown, very much reduced. Quite a simple little gown, but it looks very well on. This embroidery is all hand-done. The bodice is prettily made."

Bridgie privately thought the simple little gown a most elaborate creation, but her hopes went up as she heard that "very cheap," and she asked the price with trembling hope, whereupon the show-woman referred to the little ticket sewn on the belt, and said airily,--"Eight and a half guineas, madam. Reduced from twelve. It really is quite a bargain."

"Ye might as well say a thousand pounds!" said Bridgie hopelessly, relapsing into a deep, musical brogue in the emotion of the moment, and, wonder of wonders, the bored superiority of the great lady's manner gave place to a smile of sympathetic amus.e.m.e.nt.

She was accustomed to customers who asked the prices of a dozen dresses in succession, and then floated away declaring that they would "think it over," never, as she knew well, to return again; but not one in a thousand was honest enough to make a confession of poverty! She lived in an atmosphere of vanity and affectation, and put on her haughty manners every morning with her black satin dress; but at night she was only a poor, tired, working woman, going home to a dingy lodging, and dividing her earnings with an invalid mother and a family of struggling brothers and sisters. Her heart went out to this other girl who was so evidently a lady despite her poverty, and when Bridgie mentioned a ludicrously small sum as the limit to which she was prepared to go, she showed neither surprise nor the thinly-veiled contempt which is usual under the circ.u.mstances, but volunteered some really useful information in its place.

"You will not be able to buy any ready-made costume for that price, madam, but there will be a special sale of dress materials on Tuesday next. If you could be here quite early in the morning, and go straight to the counter under the clock, you would find some wonderful bargains.

I should advise you to leave it until then, but perhaps there is some other department to which I could direct you."

"Thank you, I'm dreadfully tired. Could we go somewhere, and have a cup of tea?"

The way was pointed out, and the sisters mounted the stairs once more, took possession of a little table in a corner, and leant back wearily in their chairs. The room was crowded like the others, but it was comparatively quiet, for the ladies were resting after the fray, stifling surrept.i.tious yawns, and sipping tea with languid enjoyment.

It was a long time before Bridgie could find anyone to attend to her wants, and meantime the temptation of the parcels lying before her was too great to be resisted. "I really must look at those gloves and the lace ties that are wrapped up with them! I never had so many new pairs in my life, but they were so cheap that I hadn't the heart to leave them. 'Twill be a refreshment to gloat over them until the tea comes!"

She untied the string and complacently folded back the paper, but, alas!

what was then revealed was the reverse of refreshing, for, in some mysterious manner, the gloves and laces had disappeared, and in their place lay a fragment of dull, prosaic flannel, at which the poor bargain-hunter stared with dilated eyes.

"F-flannel!" she gasped. "Flannel! It was gloves when it was made up.

What's the matter with it--is it witchcraft?"

"I'd call it stupidity, if you asked my opinion," said Pixie calmly.

"You've stolen a poor creature's parcel, and perhaps she wanted to make a poultice with it. It will be awful for her when she goes home, and her husband groaning in agony, and nothing to relieve him but two lace ties! I pity her when she finds it out."

"She has stolen my gloves. I'm not sorry for her at all, and if she is an honest woman she will bring them back at once and hand them in to the office. I shall take the wretched flannel there the moment we go downstairs, but I've a conviction that I'll never see my parcel again.

I suppose they got changed at one of those crowded counters. I don't think I care for sales very much, Pixie; they are too expensive. We will go straight home after we have had tea."

"We will so, and make haste about it. I wanted specially to be back by four o'clock."

To Bridgie's surprise, however, ten minutes before the omnibus reached the corner at which they were wont to alight, Pixie beckoned to the conductor to stop, and announced her intention of walking the rest of the way. There was no time to discuss the point, and as she herself was too tired to walk a step farther than she was obliged, she sat still and watched the little figure affectionately until the omnibus rounded a corner and it was hidden from sight.

She would have been astonished if she had seen the sudden energy with which Pixie immediately turned right about face and walked away in the opposite direction, taking a crumpled square of newspaper from her pocket, and reading over a certain advertis.e.m.e.nt with eager attention.

"'Wanted a French lady.'--I'm not whole French, but I'm half. Haven't I been in their country nearly two years? 'To amuse two children.'--I'd amuse a dozen, and never know I was doing it! 'And perfect them in the language for a couple of hours every morning.' Look at that, now, it's better than the jetted lace! Two hours wouldn't interfere with me one bit, for I've all the day to do nothing. 'Apply personally between four and six at Seven, Fitzjames Crescent.' Only ten minutes' walk from me own door, as if it had been made on purpose to suit me! And quite a good-looking house it is, with real silk curtains in the windows."

She tripped undauntedly up the steps and pressed the electric bell, and, all unseen to her eyes, the little G.o.d of fate peered at her from behind the fat white pillars of the portico, and clapped his little hands in triumph.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

PIXIE SCORES A SUCCESS.

A butler came to the door, a solemn-looking butler, with a white tie and immaculate black clothes, but he seemed rather stupid for his age, for he asked twice over before he could grasp the fact that Pixie had called in answer to the advertis.e.m.e.nt, and then stared fixedly at her all the time he was escorting her to the room where the other lady applicants were waiting their turns.

Pixie gasped as she looked round and saw ladies, ladies everywhere, on the row of leather chairs ranged along by the wall, on the sofa, on the two easy-lounges by the fireside,--old ladies, young ladies, middle-aged ladies, elderly ladies, shabby and dressy, fat and thin, but all distinctly past their first youth, and all most obviously French. They gaped at the new-comer, even as the butler had done, and she bowed graciously from side to side, and said, "Bon jour, mesdames!" in her most Parisian manner, then squeezed herself into a little corner by the window and listened entranced to the never-ending stream of conversation.

A room full of Englishwomen would under the circ.u.mstances have preserved a depressed and solemn silence, but these good ladies chattered like magpies, with such shruggings of shoulders, such waving of hands, such shrillness of emphasis, that Pixie felt as if she were once more domiciled in the Avenue Gustave.

The lady in the plaid dress, who occupied the next chair, asked her with frank curiosity to recount then how she found herself in such a position, and, being a.s.sured that she was indeed applying for the situation, prophesied that it would never march! She turned and whispered loudly to her companion, "Behold her, the poor pigeon! One sees well that she has the white heart!" But the companion was less amiable, and enraged herself because there were already applicants enough, and with each new-comer her own chance of success became less a.s.sured.

At intervals of five or ten minutes the butler returned and marshalled the next in order to the presence of the lady of the house, but, short as were the interviews, it was a weary wait before it came to Pixie's turn, and she wondered fearfully whether Bridgie had taken fright at her absence, and was even now searching the streets in a panic of alarm.

The hands of the clock pointed to ten minutes to six before the butler gave the longed-for signal, and she smiled at him in her most friendly manner as she crossed the room towards him. Without any exchange of words she divined that he took more interest in herself than in any of the other applicants, and also that for some mysterious reason he was sorry for her, and imagined that she was making a mistake, and the smile was meant at once as thanks and rea.s.surement.

They walked together down the slippery floor, such a slippery, shiny floor, that one felt as if skates would be almost more in keeping than boots, and finally arrived at a cosy little room at the back of the house, where a tired-looking gentleman and a bored-looking lady stood ready to receive her. They looked at each other, they looked at the butler, they looked again at the little pig-tailed figure, with short skirts and beaming, childlike face, and their faces became blank with astonishment.

"Bon jour, mademoiselle!" began the lady uncertainly.

"Good day to ye!" said Pixie in response, and at that the bewilderment became more marked than ever. The lady sat down and drew a long, weary sigh. She was handsome and young, but very, very thin, and looked as if she had hardly enough energy to go through any more interviews.

"Then--then you are not French after all?"

"I forgot!" sighed Pixie sadly. She sat down and hitched her chair nearer the fire in sociable fashion. "It's just like me to make up me mind, and then forget at the right moment! I intended to let you hear me speak French, before I broke it to you that I'm Irish and all my people before me."

"I almost think I should have discovered it for myself!" said the lady, looking as if she were not quite sure whether to be amused or irritated.

"But if that is so, what is your business here? I advertised for a French lady."

"You did. I read the advertis.e.m.e.nt, but if I'm not French I'm just as good, for I've just last month returned from Paris, and the lady where I was staying was most particular about my accent. Over in Ireland I was so quick in picking up the brogue that I had to be sent to England to get rid of it, and I was just as handy with another language. If I'd remembered to answer you in French, you would never have known the difference between me and those old ladies who came in first."

"Old ladies, indeed! I'll never advertise again if this is what it means!" sighed the lady _sotto voce_. She looked across the room, met a gleam of amus.e.m.e.nt in her husband's eyes, and said in a tolerant voice, "Well, then, let me hear you now! I am a pretty good French scholar myself, so you won't find me easy to deceive!"

"Perfectly, madam, perfectly!" cried Pixie, gesticulating a.s.sent. She found none of the difficulty in settling what to talk about which handicaps most people under similar circ.u.mstances, but poured forth a stream of commonplaces in such fluent, rapid French as showed that she had good reason for boasting of proficiency. When she finished, the lady looked at her husband with a triumphant air, and cried--

"There! It shows how important it is for children to learn a language while they are still young. It can never be mastered so well if it is left until they are grown-up."

Then turning to Pixie--

"Yes, indeed, you speak French charmingly. I congratulate you, and hope you may find it very useful. You are so young that you cannot have finished your own education. Perhaps you are going to school in England?"

"'Deed I am not. I want to teach instead. My brother is a very grand gentleman, but he's in difficulties. He has a fine estate in Ireland, but it is let, and he's over in London trying to make enough money to get back again, and that's none too easy, as you may know yourself, and if I can earn some money it will keep me from being a burden on me friends. I've answered quite a lot of advertis.e.m.e.nts, but there was nothing really to suit me until I saw your own yesterday morning."

"I see! May I ask if your mother knows what you are doing--if you are here with her consent?"