When Miss Sharp had performed the heroical act mentioned in the last
chapter, and had seen the Dixonary, flying over the pavement of the
little garden, fall at length at the feet of the astonished Miss
Jemima, the young lady's countenance, which had before worn an almost
livid look of hatred, assumed a smile that perhaps was scarcely more
agreeable, and she sank back in the carriage in an easy frame of mind,
saying--"So much for the Dixonary; and, thank God, I'm out of Chiswick."
Miss Sedley was almost as flurried at the act of defiance as Miss
Jemima had been; for, consider, it was but one minute that she had left
school, and the impressions of six years are not got over in that space
of time. Nay, with some persons those awes and terrors of youth last
for ever and ever. I know, for instance, an old gentleman of
sixty-eight, who said to me one morning at breakfast, with a very
agitated countenance, "I dreamed last night that I was flogged by Dr.
Raine." Fancy had carried him back five-and-fifty years in the course
of that evening. Dr. Raine and his rod were just as awful to him in
his heart, then, at sixty-eight, as they had been at thirteen. If the
Doctor, with a large birch, had appeared bodily to him, even at the age
of threescore and eight, and had said in awful voice, "Boy, take down
your pant--"? Well, well, Miss Sedley was exceedingly alarmed at this
act of insubordination.
"How could you do so, Rebecca?" at last she said, after a pause.
"Why, do you think Miss Pinkerton will come out and order me back to
the black-hole?" said Rebecca, laughing.
"No: but--"
"I hate the whole house," continued Miss Sharp in a fury. "I hope I
may never set eyes on it again. I wish it were in the bottom of the
Thames, I do; and if Miss Pinkerton were there, I wouldn't pick her
out, that I wouldn't. O how I should like to see her floating in the
water yonder, turban and all, with her train streaming after her, and
her nose like the beak of a wherry."
"Hush!" cried Miss Sedley.
"Why, will the black footman tell tales?" cried Miss Rebecca, laughing.
"He may go back and tell Miss Pinkerton that I hate her with all my
soul; and I wish he would; and I wish I had a means of proving it, too.
For two years I have only had insults and outrage from her. I have been
treated worse than any servant in the kitchen. I have never had a
friend or a kind word, except from you. I have been made to tend the
little girls in the lower schoolroom, and to talk French to the Misses,
until I grew sick of my mother tongue. But that talking French to Miss
Pinkerton was capital fun, wasn't it? She doesn't know a word of
French, and was too proud to confess it. I believe it was that which
made her part with me; and so thank Heaven for French. Vive la France!
Vive l'Empereur! Vive Bonaparte!"