“What are they, Caroline?”
“Only to ease my mind by expressing for once part of what I think, and then to make you better satisfied with yourself.”
“By assuring me that my kinswoman is my sincere friend?”
“Just so. I am your sincere friend, Robert.”
“And I am – what chance and change shall make me, Lina.”
“Not my enemy, however?”
The answer was cut short by Sarah and her mistress entering the kitchen together in some commotion. They had been improving the time which Mr. Moore and Miss Helstone had spent in dialogue by a short dispute on the subject of “café au lait,” which Sarah said was the queerest mess she ever saw, and a waste of God’s good gifts, as it was “the nature of coffee to be boiled in water,” and which mademoiselle affirmed to be “un breuvage royal,” a thousand times too good for the mean person who objected to it.
The former occupants of the kitchen now withdrew into the parlour. Before Hortense followed them thither, Caroline had only time again to question, “Not my enemy, Robert?” And Moore, Quaker-like, had replied with another query, “Could I be?” And then, seating himself at the table, had settled Caroline at his side.
Caroline scarcely heard mademoiselle’s explosion of wrath when she rejoined them; the long declamation about the “conduite indigne de cette méchante créature” sounded in her ear as confusedly as the agitated rattling of the china. Robert laughed a little at it, in very subdued sort, and then, politely and calmly entreating his sister to be tranquil, assured her that if it would yield her any satisfaction, she should have her choice of an attendant amongst all the girls in his mill. Only he feared they would scarcely suit her, as they were most of them, he was informed, completely ignorant of household work; and pert and self-willed as Sarah was, she was, perhaps, no worse than the majority of the women of her class.
Mademoiselle admitted the truth of this conjecture: according to her, “ces paysannes anglaises étaient tout insupportables.” What would she not give for some “bonne cuisinière anversoise,” with the high cap, short petticoat, and decent sabots proper to her class – something better, indeed, than an insolent coquette in a flounced gown, and absolutely without cap! (For Sarah, it appears, did not partake the opinion of St. Paul that “it is a shame for a woman to go with her head uncovered;” but, holding rather a contrary doctrine, resolutely refused to imprison in linen or muslin the plentiful tresses of her yellow hair, which it was her wont to fasten up smartly with a comb behind, and on Sundays to wear curled in front.)