Animating Maria Read Online Free PDF Page A

hope there.’
    Maria nodded and drank her coffee while inwardly fuming. Then a smile curled her lips. He could hardly avoid her that evening. There just weren’t enough ladies to go around.
    After dinner, Maria was helped into her ball-gown by Betty. Betty was in raptures over the transformation but Miss Spiggs held up her hands in shock. The neckline was too low, she said. And all that green silk embellishment! So common!
    ‘Stow it,’ said Maria with a bluntness worthy of Miss Amy Tribble. She twisted this way and that in front of the glass. The new neckline of the gown was edged with green silk leaves which she had cut out of the green silk gown. The same leaves formed a band about the sleeves and decorated the hem between the flounces. Betty arranged the green silk roses Maria had made in her hair and then clasped a necklace of coral about her neck.
    There came a great commotion from the courtyard outside. Maria went to the window, opened it and leaned out. Carriage after carriage was arriving in the courtyard below and ladies were descending, beautiful and groomed ladies, expensively gowned ladies, dipping their feathered heads as they climbed down from the carriages, lifting their skirts high above the mud of the yard with a prancing step, like circus ponies, thought Maria.
    Maria drew her head in and rang the bell. After some time, a breathless chambermaid answered its summons and to Maria’s questions replied that the Dowager Duchess of Berham had been entertaining a large party of friends and they had all decided to drive over and attend the ball. A great matchmaker was the old duchess, said the chambermaid. She never gave up trying to find a bride for her son and kept inviting some of the fairest ladies in the land in the hope of persuading her son to marry one of them.
    Maria thanked her and then sat down. She smoothed down her gown with a nervous hand. Was it too provincial? Would these grand ladies recognize a provincial gown hurriedly made over?
    The sheer idea of the duke even asking her for one dance now seemed ridiculous.
    ‘I think it is time we left,’ said Miss Spiggs. She was wearing a mud-coloured gown and a pleated cap of depressing grey georgette. Maria thought her companion looked as inspiring as a rainy day.
    ‘Where is the diamond pin I gave you?’ asked Maria.
    ‘I put it away safely,’ said Miss Spiggs. ‘Someone might snatch it from my bosom at the ball.’
    Maria giggled at the thought of anyone being bold enough even to approach Miss Spiggs’s formidable bosom. Miss Spiggs’s breasts were pushed up so high by her whalebone corsets that she looked as if her chin were resting on a mud-coloured pillow.
    They made their way downstairs to the assembly room at the back of the inn. Banks of hothouse flowers from the duke’s estate scented the air. Masses of candles were blazing and a large fire had been lit at either end of the room.
    Not only the duke and his mother’s friends were present along with the stranded travellers at the inn, but everyone else from the villages round about. It was to be a real country ball, run on democratic lines that would have shocked London society had it taken place at, say, Almack’s. A country dance was in progress. The major-domo was calling out cheerfully, ‘Cross hands and down the middle,’ and a flushed and sweating farmer was leading an elegant and aristocratic lady down the set.
    Maria looked about for Frederica Sunningdale but did not see her.
    Then she felt a hand on her arm. ‘Maria,’ said a voice. ‘It is not so very frightening after all. There are quite a lot of very common people here.’
    Maria turned about. Without her poke-bonnet, Frederica was revealed as a very pretty girl. She had a glossy mop of jet-black curls, wide blue eyes, and a neat figure.
    ‘Let us find somewhere to sit down,’ said Maria, ‘before this set ends.’
    ‘Come and meet my parents,’ urged Frederica. ‘I think we should forget about the duke, do