Maggie MacKeever Read Online Free PDF Page A

opinion she aired. “I’ve known you from the cradle, Miss!” she added sternly. “Even if I wasn’t on terms with your mama—may she rest in peace—as result of her foolishness over That Man. So you needn’t be trying to play off your tricks on me!”
    In a very businesslike manner, Melly dashed away her tears. “You always were the most complete hand, Aunt Hel—Heloise! I shan’t be a bit of bother, truly; just give me an attic where I may sleep and I will work my fingers to the bone.” As if in proof of her assertion, she wriggled those digits. “You know I am a nacky seamstress; you taught me yourself!”
    By experience rendered immune to tears and cajolery alike, stratagems common among the seamstresses in her employ, Madame continued to look severe. “What about the Hussars, Miss?”
    A kind-hearted girl, who hated to cause disappointment, Melly foresaw that in this instance she could not live up to her ambition of spreading sunshine throughout the world—and for a damsel of nineteen, Melly had already spread a great deal of sunshine, if not throughout the world precisely, at least among those masculine citizens who had been fortunate enough to cross her path. It was precisely for that reason that she found it so difficult to hold down a position. “They looked so very handsome in their uniforms!” she sighed. “Full-dress regimentals with pretty yellow boots!”
    Madame le Best, pondering the perverse fate that had, at the moment of her triumph, inflicted upon her a niece prone to fall into pickles, suffered a moment’s disorientation as result of that damsel’s confessed preference for the military. Then she recalled that the Tenth Light Dragoons were on home service in Brighton. It was a fact, she suspected, that she should have recalled earlier. “You have been cutting a lark again,” she sighed. “I don’t know what is to become of you if you go on in this way.”
    Had she been of a more reflective nature, Melly might have derived a certain disappointment from her aunt’s failure to appreciate her efforts to spread happiness and good cheer. But Melly was not familiar with rumination. “You always was one to kick up a dust over trifles!” she soothed. “I promise you it ain’t anything so dreadful, Aunt Helen—Heloise! It was just a matter of Captain Birmingham missing parade on my account, and I still say it was very shabby of Lady Birmingham to cut up so stiff about it, as if I’d deliberately stuck the needle in my thumb!”
    By these confidences, Madame’s foreboding was not stilled. “Did you do it on purpose? The truth, Miss, if you please!”
    Melly, as befit a damsel bent upon bringing merriment into a dreary world, was disinclined toward truth-telling. Truth, in her experience, was less apt to inspire a smile than a scowl and it was her intention to remove the scowl from her aunt’s brow.
    “As if I’d do such a thing!” she responded, dimpling. “You sound just like Lady Birmingham. I’ll wager she wished she’d thought of it. Because Captain Birmingham was ever so solicitous when he saw the blood—and it’s no use your asking why the Captain had gone into the sewing room instead of to the parade ground, where he belonged, like she did, because I’m sure I don’t know!”
    “So you were turned off.”
    “Oh, no! Not then!” Melly’s philosophy of truth-telling was simple: admit only what might otherwise be learned. “That occurred after Captain Birmingham had taken me to dine with his regiment in the mess hall, to make up for the horrid things Lady Birmingham said.” She heaved a great sigh. “Such a rowdy-do over nothing! I don’t know what she thought could happen with all those people around—rather, I do know, because she said—but. . .”
    “Never mind!” Madame interrupted. “I don’t care to hear the rest.”
    “I wouldn’t have, anyway!” Melly added virtuously, momentarily encouraging Madame le Best’s hopes that her own high-minded