Page:A hairdresser's experience in high life.djvu/198

200 Camelia has a perfect right to dress as she pleases and make her toilet to suit herself, and so have all other ladies, without any person interfering with them."

Nothing more was said till I came home and resumed my duties, when one day on combing this aunt, she said to me, "Iangy, in whose care did you leave Camelia when you were gone." I told her in my pupils. She said, "you should tell her not to tell one lady what she purchased for another or what any other lady wears." I told her I did.

On my going home I asked my pupil what the lady meant by the remark, who at once said she had never told any one but Tulip, and she told me how it came she mentioned it. My pupil, on combing Tulip, attacked her on the subject, when she, getting alarmed, got the first lady she told it to, and both went to Camelia and told her. Camelia was too much of a lady to say anything to me, as I had a right to speak to my pupil, and did not say any harm. Tulip, finding things did not turn out as she wished them, sent round to everybody she could, even to my best friends, and tried to do me harm, for no cause on earth, for she herself was the transgressor. This went on for two years, and I did not know anything of it. I knew I had enemies, and I knew there must be something the matter, as some ladies treated me very differently from their usual way, but as I had not done anything to offend them, I did not care, nor did I inquire the reason. To these ladies who were my friends, she would not say anything very spiteful against me. There were some ladies who had recently joined the church, and they thought it the duty of all church members to espouse each other's cause and fight each