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Chevassat, which very likely would have inflamed the imagination of some poor but ambitious girl, caused nothing but disgust in Henrietta's heart. She had gotten into the habit of thinking of other things while the old woman was holding forth; and her noble soul floated off to regions where these vulgarities could reach her no more. Her life was, nevertheless, a very sad one.
She had no luncheon. A good, substantial tea, please, Susan. If the child were anticipating a journey, she must be fed. A little later she heard Susan knock at Henrietta's door. It was not opened, but the tray was deposited outside with a slight rattle of china, and Susan's voice, mildly reproachful, exhorted Miss Henrietta to eat and drink.
"How wonderful an influence the little talks Mr. Haley has had with Henrietta have had on her," she said, with such a happy glow on her face as the reformed one departed that I succeeded in suppressing the laugh that rose in me at the memory of Henrietta's account of the first one of the series.
Such were Henrietta's thoughts, when the old lady roused her from her meditations. "You saw, my dear child," she began saying, "that my brother desires us to be ready to set out on a long journey as soon as he comes home." "Yes, madam; and I am quite astonished." "I understand; but, although I know no more than you do of my brother's intentions, I know that he does nothing without a purpose.
Her face was calmly set, wakeful, but unwrinkled: the creature did not count among timid girls or among civilized. She had got what she wanted from her madman mad in his impulses, mad in his reading of honour. She was the sister of Henrietta's husband. Henrietta bore the name she had quitted. Could madness go beyond the marrying of the creature?
I had something less than two dollars in my purse, and pay-day, for me, was still a week off. And so I accepted the proposition, and by lunch-time the news was all over the factory that the new girl was to be Henrietta's room-mate. Annie Kinzer everybody, in fact approved, except, possibly, Emma. Emma was a homely, plainly dressed girl who had worked ten years here at Springer's.
She felt amiably disposed towards him since his intrusion closed a conversation causing her no little disturbance of mind. Henrietta's last speech, in particular, set her nerves tingling with most conflicting emotions. If Henrietta so praised her that praise must be deserved, for who could be better qualified to give judgment on such a subject than the perfectly equipped Henrietta?
The door to the closet was gone, and in its recess a pair of trousers hung limply, while Henrietta's scant wardrobe was ranged along the black-painted wall outside. The long, cobweb-hung windows, bare of blind or curtain, showed a black-mirrored surface against the batten shutters.
But in the interval a hopeful smile had reappeared on Henrietta's face, and she looked almost happy, when, about midnight, Papa Ravinet left them with the words, "To-morrow evening I shall have news. I am going to the navy department." The next day he reappeared precisely at six o'clock, but in what a condition!
She was entreated to give them as much of her time as possible, invited for every day and all day long, or rather claimed as part of the family; and, in return, she naturally fell into all her wonted ways of attention and assistance, and on Charles's leaving them together, was listening to Mrs Musgrove's history of Louisa, and to Henrietta's of herself, giving opinions on business, and recommendations to shops; with intervals of every help which Mary required, from altering her ribbon to settling her accounts; from finding her keys, and assorting her trinkets, to trying to convince her that she was not ill-used by anybody; which Mary, well amused as she generally was, in her station at a window overlooking the entrance to the Pump Room, could not but have her moments of imagining.
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