The Gypsy in the Parlour by Margery Sharp Read Free Book Online

She hadn’t a jealous bone in her body: to produce one sister-in-law after the other, each as striking as herself, had been to Charlotte both a glorious joke and a Sylvester triumph. If she could have turned Fanny Davis into a beauty she would have done so at once, sooner than disappoint the Assembly with an emmet.
    Witchcraft lacking, Fanny Davis continued small, plain, and—thin.
    This last was her worst disability of all. It was irretrievable. What cannot be triumphed in may still be carried off, a sister-in-law merely small and plain reflects no positive discredit. Fanny Davis, at least by local standards, looked half-starved as well. She had wrists and ankles like chicken-bones, arms like wands. She looked as though she didn’t get enough to eat. And with the best will in the world Charlotte could do nothing about that either. She knew, her eye for stock told her, that no amount of good feeding ever would flesh Fanny up; but the eyes of the Assembly might be less informed.…
    As always, the sisters-in-law thought as one.
    â€œIf folks declare we’m starving her,” stated my Aunt Grace baldly, “they’ll have every right and reason.”
    â€œCouldn’t ’ee drop a word as to my cream?” suggested Aunt Rachel. “Fanny gets my cream to her porridge every breakfast—fourpennyworth.”
    â€œUs never talked dairy-maid at the Assembly yet,” said my Aunt Grace proudly. “I say, let ’em take she as they find she—as we’m bound to do; and if any unkind, malicious word be said, I’m sure the Sylvester back’s strong enough to bear it.”
    They spoke; my Aunt Charlotte acted. She went alone into Frampton and came back with a length of silk brocade for which she had paid two guineas a yard.
    2
    We were all summoned to the parlour to see it unwrapped. The great broad folds were peacock-coloured, changing at every ripple from blue to amethyst: figured with a small golden sprig, and so stiff that they fell in pyramids. It came from France, but there was also something of the East in it; and if Charlotte had been the greatest dressmaker in the world, she could have found nothing better suited to beautify a gypsy.
    â€œThere ’tis, bors,” said my Aunt Charlotte. “Fanny’s dress for the Assembly—and it cost two guineas a yard.”
    I think that was the only time I ever saw Fanny Davis show gratitude.—Not in words: but she dropped to her knees, and pulled a stiff, glowing fold across her mouth, while her eyes, (they looked like eyes above a yashmak), burned with pleasure …
    â€œCharlotte!” breathed my Aunt Rachel. “’Tis fit—’tis fit for the Queen!”
    â€œâ€™Ee never found that to Frampton,” stated my Aunt Grace.
    â€œBrewers’ in High Street,” retorted Charlotte coolly. “See what ’tis to have a long memory. Thomas Brewer laid it in ten years back, looking to Mrs. Pomfret being Mayor’s lady. But the dropsy took her first, poor toad, and he’s been loaded with it ever since. He’d ha’ charged her three.”
    â€œThree or two, who’m be paying for it?” demanded Grace sharply.
    â€œI be,” said my Aunt Charlotte, with Norfolk aplomb. “’Tis my wedding-gift to Fanny, with which I trust she be content.”
    All eyes, naturally, turned upon Fanny, who rose to the occasion by weeping.—She would actually have wiped her eyes on the silk, had not my Aunt Grace snatched it away and substituted her own handkerchief.
    â€œâ€™Ee’ll have to make it up yourself,” warned Charlotte. “All Frampton’s busy for the Assembly. Can ’ee do it in the time?”
    â€œYes, indeed!” breathed Fanny Davis. (No one except myself, even at the time I thought it odd, seemed to remember the first-rate dressmaker in Plymouth.) “ Dear Mrs. Toby,” breathed Fanny Davis, “I shall labour