who would have followed her up-stairs, she went up to her apartment; while Briggs and Miss Crawley, in a high state of excitement, remained to discuss the strange event, and Firkin, not less moved, dived down into the kitchen regions, and talked of it with all the male and female company there. And so impressed was Mrs. Firkin with the news, that she thought proper to write off by that very night's post, "with her humble duty to Mrs. Bute Crawley and the famly at the Rectory, and Sir Pitt has been and proposed for to marry Miss Sharp, wherein she has refused him to the wonder of all."
The two ladies in the dining-room (where worthy Miss Briggs was delighted to be admitted once more to a confidential conversation with her patroness) wondered to their hearts' content at Sir Pitt's offer, and Rebecca's refusal; Briggs very acutely suggesting that there must have been some obstacle in the shape of a previous attachment, otherwise no young woman in her senses would ever have refused so advantageous a proposal. "You would have accepted it yourself, wouldn't you, Briggs?" Miss Crawley said, kindly.
"Would it not be a privilege to be Miss Crawley's sister?" Briggs replied, with meek evasion.
"Well, Becky would have made a good Lady Crawley, after all," Miss Crawley remarked, (who was mollified by the girl's refusal, and very liberal and generous now there was no call for her sacrifices.) "She has brains in plenty (much more wit in her little finger than you have my poor dear Briggs in all your head.) Her manners are excellent now I have formed her. She is a Montmorency, Briggs, and blood is something, though I despise it for my part; and she would have held her own amongst those pompous stupid Hampshire people much better than that unfortunate ironmonger's daughter."
Briggs coincided as usual, and the "previous attachment" was then discussed in conjectures. "You poor friendless creatures are always having some foolish tendre," Miss Crawley said. "You yourself, you know, were in love with a writing master (don't cry, Briggs—you're always crying, and it won't bring him to Life again), and I suppose this unfortunate Becky has been silly and sentimental too—some apothecary, or house-steward, or painter, or young curate, or something of that sort."
"Poor thing, poor thing!" says Briggs (who was thinking of twenty-four years back, and that hectic young writing master whose lock of yellow hair, and whose letters, beautiful in their illegibility, she cherished in her old desk up stairs.) "Poor thing, poor thing!" says Briggs. Once more she was a fresh-cheeked lass of eighteen; she was at evening church and the hectic writing master and she were quavering out of the same psalm-book.
"After such conduct on Rebecca's part," Miss Crawley said enthusiastically, "our family should do something. Find out who is the objet, Briggs. I'll set him up in a shop; or order my portrait of him, you know; or speak to my cousin the Bishop—and I'll doter Becky, and we'll have a wedding, Briggs, and you shall make the breakfast, and be a brides' maid."
Briggs declared that it would be delightful, and vowed that her dear
