Page:A hairdresser's experience in high life.djvu/83

Rh chambermaids were all assembled, some perfectly delighted with the way in which the ladies had treated them, others very much annoyed and mortified at the crossness and ill-nature of the ladies who fell to their lot; others, again, complaining of being tired to death, running up and down, getting this thing and that that was wanting for the ball. The housekeeper was trying to console those who had been aggrieved, by telling how she had been treated, herself, by some of them. I just then made my appearance, and told them where there were so many congregated, all could not be ladies.

One of them said, I had the privilege of choosing who to work for, and if I did not like them I need not work for them, but it was not so with them, as they were obliged to, whether they were ladies or not. I told her, "Not so, remember the pocket-handkerchief scrape."

A season or two before, a lady had come there and lost her pocket handkerchief. She blamed the chambermaid, and had her almost beside herself about it; she said it was worth twenty-five or thirty dollars—that it had been taken out of her room only that day. The chambermaid cried, and said, since she had been on that floor there had no such charge been made against her.

A gentleman, who roomed opposite, hearing the noise, opened his door, called the chambermaid, and asked what was the matter. She told him, and with tears in her eyes, said the lady blamed her, and what a costly handkerchief it was. The gentleman turned into his room, and took up a handkerchief that had lain on his table for ten days, handed it to