Not so Mrs. Staines; for some time she had been uneasy, fretful, and like a person with a weight on her mind.
One Sunday she said to him, “Oh, dear, I do feel so dull. Nobody to go to church with, nor yet to the Zoo.”
“To both; in for a penny, in for a pound.”
So to church they went; and Staines, whose motto was “Hoc age,” minded his book. Rosa had intervals of attention to the words, but found plenty of time to study the costumes.
During the Litany in bustled Clara, the housemaid, with a white jacket on so like her mistress's, that Rosa clutched her own convulsively, to see whether she had not been skinned of it by some devilish sleight-of-hand.
No, it was on her back; but Clara's was identical.
In her excitement, Rosa pinched Staines, and with her nose, that went like a water-wagtail, pointed out the malefactor. Then she whispered, “Look! How dare she? My very jacket! Earrings too, and brooches, and dresses her hair like mine.”
“Well, never mind,” whispered Staines. “Sunday is her day. We have got all the week to shine. There, don't look at her--'From all evil speaking, lying, and slandering'”--
“Attend to the Litany. Do you know, this is really a beautiful composition?”
“I'd rather do the work fifty times over myself.”
When they walked home after church, Staines tried to divert her from the consideration of her wrongs; but no--all other topics were too flat by comparison.
She mourned the hard fate of mistresses--unfortunate creatures that could not do without servants.
“Is not that a confession that servants are good, useful creatures, with all their faults? Then as to the mania for dress, why, that is not confined to them. It is the mania of the sex. Are you free from it?”
“No, of course not. But I am a lady, if you please.”
“Then she is your intellectual inferior, and more excusable. Anyway, it is wise to connive at a thing we can't help.”
“My dear, pray do not send her away, for she is tidy in the house, and quick, and better than any one we have had this last six months; and you know you have tried a great number.”
“To hear you speak, one would think it was my fault that we have so many bad servants.”
“I never said it was your fault; but I THINK, dearest, a little more forbearance in trifles”--