“It’s very badly done; surely you see that,” said Lady Aurora. “It was only a joke.”
“Oh yes, everything’s a joke!” cried the irrepressible invalid—“everything except my state of health; that’s admitted to be serious. When her ladyship sends me five shillings’ worth of coals it’s only a joke; and when she brings me a bottle of the finest port, that’s another; and when she climbs up seventy-seven stairs (there are seventy-seven, I know perfectly, though I never go up or down), at the height of the London season, to spend the evening with me, that’s the best of all. I know all about the London season, though I never go out, and I appreciate what her ladyship gives up. She is very jocular indeed, but, fortunately, I know how to take it. You can see that it wouldn’t do for me to be touchy, can’t you, Miss Pynsent?”
“Dear, dear, I should be so glad to make you anything myself; it would be better—it would be better—” Pinnie murmured, hesitating.
“It would be better than my poor work. I don’t know how to do that sort of thing, in the least,” said Lady Aurora.
“I’m sure I didn’t mean that, my lady—I only meant it would be more convenient. Anything in the world she might fancy,” the dressmaker went on, as if it were a question of the invalid’s appetite.
“Ah, you see I don’t wear things—only a flannel jacket, to be a bit tidy,” Miss Muniment rejoined. “I go in only for smart counterpanes, as you can see for yourself;” and she spread her white hands complacently over her coverlet of brilliant patchwork. “Now doesn’t that look to you, Miss Pynsent, as if it might be one of her ladyship’s jokes?”
“Oh, my good friend, how can you? I never went so far as that!” Lady Aurora interposed, with visible anxiety.
“Well, you’ve given me almost everything; I sometimes forget. This only cost me sixpence; so it comes to the same thing as if it had been a present. Yes, only sixpence, in a raffle in a bazaar at Hackney, for the benefit of the Wesleyan Chapel, three years ago. A young man who works with my brother, and lives in that part, offered him a couple of tickets; and he took one, and I took one. When I say ‘I’, of course I mean that he took the two; for how should I find (by which I mean, of course, how should _he_ find) a sixpence in that little cup on the chimney-piece unless he had put it there first? Of course my ticket took a prize, and of course, as my bed is my dwelling-place, the prize was a beautiful counterpane, of every colour of the rainbow. Oh, there never was such luck as mine!” Rosy exclaimed, flashing her gay, strange eyes at Hyacinth, as if on purpose to irritate him with her contradictious optimism.