CHAPTER VIII--THE MISTAKEN MILLINER. A TALE OF AMBITION

Miss Amelia Martin was pale, tallish, thin, and two-and-thirty--what
ill-natured people would call plain, and police reports interesting. She
was a milliner and dressmaker, living on her business and not above it.
If you had been a young lady in service, and had wanted Miss Martin, as a
great many young ladies in service did, you would just have stepped up,
in the evening, to number forty-seven, Drummond-street, George-street,
Euston-square, and after casting your eye on a brass door-plate, one foot
ten by one and a half, ornamented with a great brass knob at each of the
four corners, and bearing the inscription 'Miss Martin; millinery and
dressmaking, in all its branches;' you'd just have knocked two loud
knocks at the street-door; and down would have come Miss Martin herself,
in a merino gown of the newest fashion, black velvet bracelets on the
genteelest principle, and other little elegancies of the most approved
description.

If Miss Martin knew the young lady who called, or if the young lady who
called had been recommended by any other young lady whom Miss Martin
knew, Miss Martin would forthwith show her up-stairs into the two-pair
front, and chat she would--_so_ kind, and _so_ comfortable--it really
wasn't like a matter of business, she was so friendly; and, then Miss
Martin, after contemplating the figure and general appearance of the
young lady in service with great apparent admiration, would say how well
she would look, to be sure, in a low dress with short sleeves; made very
full in the skirts, with four tucks in the bottom; to which the young
lady in service would reply in terms expressive of her entire concurrence
in the notion, and of the virtuous indignation with which she reflected
on the tyranny of 'Missis,' who wouldn't allow a young girl to wear a
short sleeve of an arternoon--no, nor nothing smart, not even a pair of
ear-rings; let alone hiding people's heads of hair under them frightful
caps. At the termination of this complaint, Miss Amelia Martin would
distantly suggest certain dark suspicions that some people were jealous
on account of their own daughters, and were obliged to keep their
servants' charms under, for fear they should get married first, which was
no uncommon circumstance--leastways she had known two or three young
ladies in service, who had married a great deal better than their
missises, and _they_ were not very good-l