Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/420

412 not enough to choke me. And they used pounds of it in the house, where they might have used ounces. Bah! You can make tea, I not say no; but you cannot make coffee. Now, then! I want a great number sheets of silk paper.”

“Silk paper?” repeated Tynn, whom the item puzzled. “What’s that?”

“You know not what silk paper is!” angrily returned Mademoiselle Benoite. “Quelle ignorante!” she apostrophised, not caring whether she was understood or not. “ElléElle [sic] ne connait pas ce que c’est, papier-de-soie! I must have it, and a great deal of it, do you hear? It is as common as anything—silk-paper.”

“Things common in France mayn’t be common with us,” retorted Mrs. Tynn. “What is it for?”

“It is for some of these articles. If I put them by without the paper-silk round them in the cartons, they’ll not keep their colour.”

“Perhaps you mean silver-paper,” said Mary Tynn. “Tissue-paper, I have heard my Lady Verner call it. There’s none in the house, Madmisel Bennot.”

“Madmisel Bennot” stamped her foot. “A house without silk-paper in it! When you knew my lady was coming home!”

“I didn’t know she’d bring—a host of things with her that she has brought,” was the answering shaft lanced by Mrs. Tynn.

“Don’t you see that I am waiting? Will you send out for some?”

“It’s not to be had in Deerham,” said Mrs. Tynn. “If it must be had, one of the men must go to Heartburg. Why won’t the paper do that was over ’em before?”

“There not enough of that. And I choose to have fresh, I do.”

“Well, you had better give your own orders about it,” said Mary Tynn. “And then if there’s any mistake, it’ll be nobody’s fault, you know.”

Mademoiselle Benoite did not on the instant reply. She had her hands full just then. In reaching over for a particular bonnet, she managed to turn a dozen or two on to the floor. Tynn watched the picking-up process, and listened to the various ejaculations that accompanied it, in much grimness.

“What a sight of money those things must have cost!” cried she.

“What that matter?” returned the lady’s-maid. “The purse of a milor Anglais can stand anything.”

“What did she buy them for?” went on Tynn. “For what purpose?”

“Bon!” ejaculated Mademoiselle. “She buy them to wear. What else you suppose she buy them for?”

“Why! she would never wear out the half of them in all her whole life !” uttered Tynn, speaking the true sentiments of her heart. “She could not.”

“Much you know of things, Madame Teen!” was the answer, delivered in undisguised contempt for Tynn’s primitive ignorance. “They’ll not last her six months.”

“Six months!” shrieked Tynn. “She couldn’t come to an end of them dresses in six months, if she wore three a day, and never put on a dress a second time!”

“She want to wear more than three different a day sometimes. And it not the mode now to put on a robe more than once,” returned Mademoiselle Benoite, carelessly.

Tynn could only open her mouth. “If they are to be put on but once, what becomes of ’em afterwards?” questioned she, when she could find breath to speak.

“Oh, they good for jupons—petticoats, you call it. Some may be worn a second time; they can be changed by other trimmings to look like new. And the rest will be good for me: Madame la Duchesse gave me a great deal. ‘Tenez ma fille,’ she would say, ‘regardez dans ma garde-robe, et prenez autant que vous voudrez.’ She always spoke to me in French.”

Tynn wished there had been no French invented, so far as her comprehension was concerned. While she stood, undecided what reply to make, wishing very much to express her decided opinion upon the extravagance she saw around her, yet deterred from it by remembering that Mrs. Verner was now her mistress, Phœby entered with the chocolate. The girl put it down on the mantelpiece: there was no other place: and then made a sign to Mrs. Tynn that she wished to speak with her. They both left the room.

“Am I to be at the beck and call of that French madmizel?” she resentfully asked. “I was not engaged for that, Mrs. Tynn.”

“It seems we are all to be at her beck and call, to hear her go on,” was Mrs. Tynn’s wrathful rejoinder. “Of course it can’t be tolerated. We shall see in a day or two. Phœby, girl, what could possess Mrs. Verner to buy all them cart-loads of finery? She must have spent the money like water.”

“So she did,” acquiesced Phœby. “She did nothing all day long but drive about from one place to another and choose pretty things. You should see the china that’s coming over!”

“I wonder Mr. Lionel let her,” was the thoughtlessly-spoken reply of Tynn. And she tried, when too late, to cough it down.

“He helped her, I think,” answered Phœby. “I know he bought some of that beautiful jewellery for her himself, and brought it home. I saw him kiss her, through the doorway, as he clasped that pink necklace on her neck.”

“Oh well, I don’t want to hear about that rubbish,” tartly rejoined Tynn. “If you take to peep through doorways, girl, you won’t suit Verner’s Pride.”

Phœby did not like the rebuff. She turned one way, and Mrs. Tynn went off another.

In the breakfast-room below, in her charming French morning costume, tasty and elegant, sat Sibylla Verner. With French dresses, she seemed to be acquiring French habits. Late as the hour was, the breakfast remained on the table. Sibylla might have sent the things away an hour ago: but she kept a little chocolate in her cup, and toyed with it. She had never tasted chocolate for breakfast in all her life, previous to this visit to Paris: now she protested she could take nothing else. Possibly she may have caught the taste for