[A Lady of Quality by Frances Hodgson Burnett]@TWC D-Link bookA Lady of Quality CHAPTER V--"Not I," said she 13/18
She had no lawlessness or hoyden manners to contend with, but instead a haughtiness so high and demands so great that her powers could scarcely satisfy the one or her spirit stand up before the other. "It is as if one were lady-in-waiting to her Majesty's self," she used to whimper when she was alone and dare do so.
"Surely the Queen has not such a will and such a temper.
She will have me toil to look worthy of her in my habit, and bear myself like a duchess in dignity.
Alack! I have practised my obeisance by the hour to perfect it, so that I may escape her wrath.
And I must know how to look, and when and where to sit, and with what air of being near at hand, while I must see nothing! And I must drag my failing limbs hither and thither with genteel ease while I ache from head to foot, being neither young nor strong." The poor lady was so overawed by, and yet so admired, her charge, that it was piteous to behold. "She is an arrant fool," quoth Mistress Clorinda to her father.
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