And shredded blank paper floated down on the crowd.
2
miss plim disapproves—the past and the future—a dull tale in which nothing unusual happened—news!—an acrobatic butler—more news!—the race is on
It is a truth seldom acknowledged that a single woman in possession of a good fortune is not especially in want of a husband. Miss Judith Plim, socially advantaged and possessing several fortunes (although legally they belonged to other people), had always felt a man would add nothing to her happiness. As she grew older and the world offered no opportunity for her to test this theory, she became so determined in it that she assumed the same must be true for any woman.
“Just consider poor Hadassah Greig,” she said to her sister, Mrs. Pettifer, as they sipped tea at a lace-covered table in the Pettifer drawing room. “Marriage has ruined her health. Why, she’s only been a bride three weeks and is practically bedridden!”
“Hm,” Mrs. Pettifer replied. She flicked over a page in the magazine she had open on her lap.
Miss Plim eyed her narrowly through a small, round pair of spectacles. “Are you listening to me, Delphine?”
“Of course not, dear.” Mrs. Pettifer held out her hand withoutlooking up from the magazine and, with a low mutter, transported a biscuit from a nearby plate to her fingers. “But don’t let that stop you from going on.”
Miss Plim pursed her lips in lieu of employing the witches’ incantation to propel Mrs. Pettifer out the nearest window. Magic was not to be used for fun. Miss Plim was very clear on that—so clear, indeed, that she had made it the unofficial motto of the Wicken League by dint of sheer nagging. She was a stickler. Not for anything in particular, per se—but, rather, for everything. If there was stickling to be done, Miss Plim was the woman for the job. And nothing called for stickling more than witchcraft.
“What are you reading in that rag that could be more important than the willful self-ruin of independent women?” she demanded of her sister.
“An account of the Belfast riots,” Mrs. Pettifer said.
“Huh.”
(This was, it must be said, an awfully brief statement on the Irish situation from a woman who had recently used witchcraft to campaign against “that atrocious liberal” Gladstone, driving him so to distraction by subtly moving the pencil tray on his desk and the potted fern on his windowsill that he actually proposed Home Rule for the Irish and got himself laughed out of office.)
“Several people have been killed,” Mrs. Pettifer reported. “It’s quite shocking.”
Miss Plim pecked irritably at her tea. “Something more shocking happened yesterday.”
“Indeed?” Mrs. Pettifer flicked over another page. “You smiled at someone?”
“No. I was in Twining’s and that Darlington woman walked in. She acknowledged me politely with a nod.”
At this, Mrs. Pettifer finally looked up, her velvety eyes growing wide. “Not Miss Darlington, the pirate?”
“Indeed,” Miss Plim intoned.
“How atrocious! What did you do?”
“Arranged for a canister of tea to fall on her head, of course. What else could I do?”
“Nothing,” Mrs. Pettifer agreed. “And how did she respond?”
“Brace yourself, sister.”
“I am braced, sister. Tell me.”
“She laughed!”
Mrs. Pettifer, despite the bracing, gasped.
“This never would have happened a few months ago,” Miss Plim said, shaking her head as she recollected the offensive scene. The knot of black hair upon her crown reverberated with an attitude of disapproval all its own. “Apparently the woman has got herself married to someman,and it’s caused her to develop a sense of humor.” These last three words were spoken as if they tasted of raw lemon rind. “Married, in her advanced years, and moreover when she is independently wealthy! Women should only became wives if they have nothing better to do. Granted, Darlington is a pirate, therefore prone to stupid behavior. But altogether this modern trend for romance is quite ridiculous.”
“Hm,” Mrs. Pettifer said, trying not to glance at the dozen red roses her husband had given her yesterday. They stood in a vase just behind her older sister’s head, making the thin, gray-clad woman appear to be wreathed with folly. If only she knew how Mrs. Pettifer had expressed gratitude to Mr. Pettifer for those roses...
All at once Mrs. Pettifer was obliged to repurpose the magazine as a fan.
“I blame education,” Miss Plim was saying, oblivious to her sister’s blushes. “The female brain is weakened with all those ramblings frommale philosophers and foolish examples from kings.” With a click of her tongue, she damned the entire compass of pedagogical arts, selected a tiny salmon sandwich from the tiered plate before her, then muttered a few words to engage the teapot in refilling her cup while she herself cut the sandwich into quarters. “At least our Charlotte seems established as an old maid.”
