Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 1.djvu/94

 steadily while he said, 'My mother died many years ago; she was a great invalid. But Pinnie has been awfully good to me.'

'My mother's dead too,' Miss Henning remarked. 'She died very suddenly. I daresay you remember her in the Place.' Then, while Hyacinth disengaged from the past the wavering figure of Mrs. Henning, of whom he mainly remembered that she used to strike him as dirty, the girl added, smiling, but with more sentiment, 'But I have had no Pinnie.'

'You look as if you could take care of yourself.'

'Well, I'm very confiding,' said Millicent Henning. Then she asked what had become of Mr. Vetch. 'We used to say that if Miss Pynsent was your mamma, he was your papa. In our family we used to call him Miss Pynsent's young man.'

'He's her young man still,' Hyacinth said. 'He's our best friend—or supposed to be. He got me the place I'm in now. He lives by his fiddle, as he used to do.'

Millicent looked a little at her companion, after which she remarked, 'I should have thought he would have got you a place at his theatre.'

'At his theatre? That would have been no use. I don't play any instrument.'

'I don't mean in the orchestra, you gaby! You would look very nice in a fancy costume.' She had her elbows on the table, and her shoulders lifted, in an attitude of extreme familiarity. He was on the point of replying that he didn't care for fancy costumes, he wished to go through life in his own character; but he checked himself, with the reflection that this was exactly what, apparently, he was