_St. Agnes' Eve, Tennyson_.
Miss Waghorn, of late, had been unusually trying, and especially full
of complaints. Her poor old memory seemed broken beyond repair. She
offered Madame Jequier her weekly payment twice within ten minutes,
and was quite snappy about it when the widow declined the second
tender.
'But you had the receipt in your hand wizin ten minutes ago, Mees
Wag'orn. You took it upstairs. The ink can hardly be now already yet
dry.' But nothing would satisfy her that she had paid until they went
up to her room together and found it after much searching between her
Bible and her eternal novel on the writing-table.
'Forgive me, Madame, but you do forget sometimes, don't you?' she
declared with amusing audacity. 'I like to make quite sure---
especially where money is concerned.' On entering the room she had
entirely forgotten why they came there. She began complaining,
instead, about the bed, which had not yet been made. A standing source
of grumbling, this; for the old lady would come down to breakfast many
a morning, and then go up again before she had it, thinking it was
already late in the day. She worried the _pensionnaires_ to death,
too. It was their duty to keep the salon tidy, and Miss Waghorn would
flutter into the room as early as eight o'clock, find the furniture
still unarranged, and at once dart out again to scold the girls.
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