"'Twas you!" she shrieked. "'Twas you--she-devil-beast--slut that
you are! 'Twas when you used your scissors to the new head you made
for me. You set it on my hair that you might set a loop--and in
your sluttish way you snipped a lock by accident and hid it from
me."
She beat her till her own black hair flew about her like the mane of
a fury; and having used her hands till they were tired, she took her
brush from the table and beat her with that till the room echoed
with the blows on the stout shoulders.
"Mistress, 'twas not so!" cried the poor thing, sobbing and
struggling. "'Twas not so, madam!"
"Madam, you will kill the woman," wept Mistress Wimpole. "I beseech
you -! 'Tis not seemly, I beseech--"
Mistress Clorinda flung her woman from her and threw the brush at
Mistress Wimpole, crying at her with the lordly rage she had been
wont to shriek with when she wore breeches.
"Damnation to thy seemliness!" she cried, "and to thee too! Get
thee gone--from me, both--get thee gone from my sight!"
And both women fled weeping, and sobbing, and gasping from the room
incontinently.
She was shrewish and sullen with her woman for days after, and it
was the poor creature's labour to keep from her sight, when she
dressed her head, the place from whence the lock had been taken. In
the servants' hall the woman vowed that it was not she who had cut
it, that she had had no accident, though it was true she had used
the scissors about her head, yet it was but in snipping a ribbon,
and she had not touched a hair.
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