"He is nothing to me," interrupted Miss Squeers, with hysterical symptoms. "I despise him too much!"
"Oh, you don't mean that, I am sure?" replied her friend. "Confess, Fanny; don't you like him now?"
Without returning any direct reply Miss Squeers all at once fell into a paroxysm of spiteful tears, and exclaimed that she was a wretched, neglected, miserable, castaway.
"I hate everybody," said Miss Squeers, "and I wish that everybody was dead—that I do."
"Dear, dear!" said Miss Price, quite moved by this avowal of misanthropical sentiments. "You are not serious, I am sure."
"Yes, I am," rejoined Miss Squeers, tying tight knots in her pocket-handkerchief and clenching her teeth. "And I wish I was dead too. There."
"Oh! you'll think very differently in another five minutes," said Matilda. "How much better to take him into favour again, than to hurt yourself by going on in that way; wouldn't it be much nicer now to have him all to yourself on good terms, in a company-keeping, love-making, pleasant sort of manner?"
"I don't know but what it would," sobbed Miss Squeers. "Oh! 'Tilda, how could you have acted so mean and dishonourable! I wouldn't have believed it of you if anybody had told me."
"Heyday!" exclaimed Miss Price, giggling. "One would suppose I had been murdering somebody at least."
"Very nigh as bad," said Miss Squeers passionately.
"And all this because I happen to have enough of good looks to make people civil to me," cried Miss Price. "Persons don't make their own faces, and it's no more my fault if mine is a good one than it is other people's fault if theirs is a bad one."
"Hold your tongue," shrieked Miss Squeers, in her shrillest tone; "or you'll make me slap you, 'Tilda, and afterwards I should be sorry for it."
It is needless to say that by this time the temper of each young lady was in some slight degree affected by the tone of the conversation, and that a dash of personality was infused into the altercation in consequence. Indeed the quarrel, from slight beginnings, rose to a considerable height, and was assuming a very violent complexion, when both parties, falling into a great passion of tears, exclaimed simultaneously, that they had never thought of being spoken to in that way, which exclamation, leading to a remonstrance, gradually brought on an explanation, and the upshot was that they fell into each other's arms and vowed eternal friendship; the occasion in question, making the fifty-second time of repeating the same impressive ceremony within a twelvemonth.
Perfect amicability being thus restored, a dialogue naturally ensued upon the number and nature of the garments which would be indispensable for Miss Price's entrance into the holy state of matrimony, when Miss Squeers clearly showed that a great many more than the miller could, or would, afford were absolutely necessary, and could not decently be dispensed with. The young lady then, by an easy digression, led the discourse to her own wardrobe, and after recounting its
