Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 1.djvu/78

 I used to have, if that's what you mean. My eyes are not so good, and my health has failed with advancing years.'

I know not to what extent Millicent was touched by the dignity of this admission, but she replied, without embarrassment, that what Miss Pynsent wanted was a smart young assistant, some nice girl with a pretty taste, who would brighten up the business and give her new ideas. 'I can see you have got the same old ones, always: I can tell that by the way you have stuck the braid on that dress;' and she directed a poke of her neat little umbrella to the drapery in the dressmaker's lap. She continued to patronise and exasperate her, and to offer her consolation and encouragement with the heaviest hand that had ever been applied to Miss Pynsent's sensitive surface. Poor Amanda ended by gazing at her as if she were a public performer of some kind, a ballad-singer or a conjurer, and went so far as to ask herself whether the hussy could be (in her own mind) the 'nice girl' who was to regild the tarnished sign. Miss Pynsent had had assistants, in the past—she had even, once, for a few months, had a 'forewoman;' and some of these damsels had been precious specimens, whose misdemeanours lived vividly in her memory. Never, all the same, in her worst hour of delusion, had she trusted her interests to such an extravagant baggage as this. She was quickly reassured as to Millicent's own views, perceiving more and more that she was a tremendous highflyer, who required a much larger field of action than the musty bower she now honoured, heaven only knew why, with her presence. Miss Pynsent held her tongue, as she always did, when the sorrow of her life had been touched, the thought of the slow, inexorable decline on which she had entered that day,