What a dignity it gives an old lady, that balance
at the banker’s! How tenderly we look at
her faults if she is a relative (and may every reader
have a score of such), what a kind good-natured old
creature we find her! How the junior partner
of Hobbs and Dobbs leads her smiling to the carriage
with the lozenge upon it, and the fat wheezy coachman!
How, when she comes to pay us a visit, we generally
find an opportunity to let our friends know her station
in the world! We say (and with perfect truth)
I wish I had Miss MacWhirter’s signature to
a cheque for five thousand pounds. She wouldn’t
miss it, says your wife. She is my aunt, say
you, in an easy careless way, when your friend asks
if Miss MacWhirter is any relative. Your wife
is perpetually sending her little testimonies of affection,
your little girls work endless worsted baskets, cushions,
and footstools for her. What a good fire there
is in her room when she comes to pay you a visit,
although your wife laces her stays without one!
The house during her stay assumes a festive, neat,
warm, jovial, snug appearance not visible at other
seasons. You yourself, dear sir, forget to go
to sleep after dinner, and find yourself all of a
sudden (though you invariably lose) very fond of a
rubber. What good dinners you have—game
every day, Malmsey-Madeira, and no end of fish from
London. Even the servants in the kitchen share
in the general prosperity; and, somehow, during the
stay of Miss MacWhirter’s fat coachman, the beer
is grown much stronger, and the consumption of tea
and sugar in the nursery (where her maid takes her
meals) is not regarded in the least. Is it so,
or is it not so? I appeal to the middle classes.
Ah, gracious powers! I wish you would send me
an old aunt—a maiden aunt—an
aunt with a lozenge on her carriage, and a front of
light coffee-coloured hair—how my children
should work workbags for her, and my Julia and I would
make her comfortable! Sweet—sweet vision!
Foolish—foolish dream!
CHAPTER X
Miss Sharp Begins to Make Friends
And now, being received as a member of the amiable
family whose portraits we have sketched in the foregoing
pages, it became naturally Rebecca’s duty to
make herself, as she said, agreeable to her benefactors,
and to gain their confidence to the utmost of her
power. Who can but admire this quality of gratitude
in an unprotected orphan; and, if there entered some
degree of selfishness into her calculations, who can
say but that her prudence was perfectly justifiable?
“I am alone in the world,” said the friendless
girl. “I have nothing to look for but what
my own labour can bring me; and while that little
pink-faced chit Amelia, with not half my sense, has
ten thousand pounds and an establishment secure, poor
Rebecca (and my figure is far better than hers) has
only herself and her own wits to trust to. Well,
let us see if my wits cannot provide me with an honourable
