“Leave me alone! Are hands like yours made to work?”
And when Henrietta insisted, and showed her, as a proof of what she
could do, the embroidery which she had commenced, she replied,--
“That is very pretty; but embroidering from morning till night would not
enable a fairy to keep a canary-bird.”
There was probably some truth in what she said, exaggerated as it
sounded; and the poor girl hastened to add that she understood other
kinds of work also. She was a first-class musician, for instance, and
fully able to give music-lessons, or teach singing, if she could only
get pupils. At these words a ray of diabolic satisfaction lighted up the
old woman’s eyes; and she cried out,--
“What, my ‘pussy-cat,’ could you play dancing-music, like those artists
who go to the large parties of fashionable people?”
“Certainly!”
“Well, that is a talent worth something! Why did you not tell me before?
I will think of it, and you shall see.”
On the next Saturday, early in the morning, she appeared in Henrietta’s
room with the bright face of a bearer of good news.
“I have thought of you,” she said as soon as she entered.
“Ah!”
“We have a tenant in the house who is going to give a large party
to-night. I have mentioned you to her; and she says she will give you
thirty francs if you will make her guests jump. Thirty francs! That’s a
big sum; and besides, if they are pleased, you will get more customers.”
“In what part of the house does she live?”
“In the second story of the back building, looking upon the yard. Mrs.
Hilaire, a very nice person, and so good! there is no one like her. You
would have to be there at nine o’clock precisely.”
“I’ll come.”
Quite happy, and full of hope, Henrietta spent a part of the afternoon
in mending her only dress, a black silk dress, much worn unfortunately,
and already often repaired. Still, by much skill and patience, she
had managed to look quite respectable when she rang the bell at Mrs.
Hilaire’s door. She was shown into a room furnished with odd furniture,
but brilliantly lighted, in which seven or eight ladies in flaming
costumes, and as many fashionable gentlemen, were smoking and taking
coffee. Both ladies and gentlemen had just risen from table; there was
no mistaking it from their eyes and the sound of their voices.
“Look! there is the musician from the garret!” exclaimed a large,
dark-skinned woman, pretty, but very vulgar, who seemed to be Mrs.
Hilaire.