Page:A Legend of Camelot, Pictures and Poems, etc. George du Maurier, 1898.djvu/171



RS. SPRATT'S bed was not all roses neither. Smart people have at times a very provoking way with them. One day they are quite playful and familiar. The next, when we would be playful and familiar in our turn, with all the world looking on, they will publicly ignore us through a double eyeglass, to our great discomfiture, as we would naturally like to pass before the world for being their bosom friends.

That is, if we are Spratts.

And then they keep us in such tortures of suspense! either forgetting to bid us to the feast our Spratty souls are hungering for, or else inviting us, as by an afterthought, at the eleventh hour, when we feel puzzled as to whether we had better be Sprattishly dignified, and decline with thanks, or put our prides in our pockets and go; and if we go, it is ten to one they will look as if they wondered what the deuce we are doing there; and if we don't, they never perceive our absence, and we are none the better in their eyes for the self-respect that has cost us so much self-denial. O we Spratts!

Also, it must be owned that Mrs. Spratt's beauty, and the very ample justice that was done to it both by herself and by the gorgeous Swells, did not greatly recommend that lady to the glittering Swellesses; so that she often met with cruel snubs and haunting slights from Ladies less beautiful, but of infinitely greater social importance than herself.

And she had not yet learnt how to dissemble when thus aggrieved, and swallow it all, and pretend she had not perceived it; nor could she yet toady the great of her own sex, and kiss the cruel hands that scratched her, and disarm such social tyranny by penitent, humble ways, without which arts no too pretty woman of her degree can appear to hold her own in the hollow world of fashion; nor had she, on the other hand, that mixture of thick-skinned impudence with ready mother-wit, which sometimes makes the merest parvenue a match for all the dowagers in England, and a thorn in their noble sides for ever; so that they give her a wide berth, and revenge themselves by telling each other that she is not a lady, and asking each other what they can expect.

Poor Mrs. Spratt! She couldn't very well put out her tongue, and say "Yah!"

In after-moments of heartburning that came of such treatment, Mrs. Spratt would fold her children to her wounded bosom, and rail at the hollow world, and rave of love and peace and the homely domestic hearth, and the good old days of "Catscradle" and "Puss in the Corner," and the long-lost trusty friends, and the good old Great-Grandpapa; and, wildly calling for socks, she would darn them with any worsted that came to hand, the salt tears in her lovely eyes, a twin on each knee, and her clever Jack's protecting arm around her; and suddenly the postman would knock, and the Duchess's belated post-card arrive, just in time; and then, with jumps of joy, and trills of triumph, and a general scattering of socks, twins, worsted, and everything else to the four winds, upstairs to dress, and away, away to the hollow world again!

And there, such snubs as she met with, she would try to pass on to others; for even in the most exclusive saloons she would occasionally have to encounter people whose presence there was an offence to her. For instance, wives and daughters of Science, Literature, and Art; actresses of high repute; eminent female 79