"Of course you do--What kind of a creature I mean--?"
"The young lady don't chatter Sir--She don't behave like bits of girls."
"You approve of her then Burton?"
"She's been here a fortnight only, Sir Nicholas, you can't tell in the
time"--and that is all I could get out of him--but I felt the verdict
when he did give it would be favourable.
Insignificant little Miss Sharp--!
What shall I do with my day--? that is the question--my rotten useless
idle day?--I have no more inspiration for my book--besides Miss Sharp
has to type the long chapter I gave her yesterday. I wonder if she knows
anything about William and Mary furniture really?--she never launches a
remark.
Her hands are very red these last days--does making bandages redden the
hands?
I wonder what colour her eyes are--one can't tell with that blurred
yellow glass--.
Suzette came in just as I wrote that; she seldom turns up in the
afternoon. She caught sight of Miss Sharp typing through the open door.
"_Tiens!_" she spit at me--"Since when?"
"I am writing a book, Suzette."
"I must see her face," and without waiting for permission, Suzette
flounced into the small salon.
I could hear her shrill little voice asking Miss Sharp to be so good as
to give her an envelope--She must write an address! I watched her--Miss
Sharp handed her one, and went on with her work.
Suzette returned, closing the door, without temper, behind her.
"Wouff!" she announced to me--"No anxiety there--an _Anglaise_--not
appetizing--not a _fausse maigre_ like us, as thin as a hairpin! Nothing
for thou Nicholas--and _Mon Dieu!_--she does the family washing by her
hands--I know! mine look like that when I have taken one of my
fortnights at the sea!"
"You think it is washing?--I was wondering--."
"Does she take off her glasses ever, Nicholas?"
"No perhaps she has weak light eyes. One never can tell!"
Suzette was not yet quite at ease about it all--. I was almost driven to
ask Miss Sharp to remove her glasses to reassure her.
Women are jealous even of one-legged half blind men! I would like to ask
my cook if he has the same trouble--but--Oh! I wish anything mattered!
Suzette showed affection for me after this--and even passion! I would be
quite good-looking she said--when I should be finished. Glass eyes were
so well made now--"and as for legs!--truly my little cabbage, they are
as nimble as a goat's!"
Of course I felt comforted when she had gone.
* * * * *
The hot days pass--Miss Sharp has not asked for a holiday, she plods
along, we do a great deal of work--and she writes all my letters. And
there are days when I know I am going to be busy with my friends, when I
tell her she need not come--there was a whole week at the end of July.
Her manner never alters, but when Burton attempted to pay her she
refused to take the cheque.
"I did not earn that" she said.