The Note on the Pincushion

The Note on the Pincushion

William Makepeace Thackeray

Wood engraving

c.1861

Illustration for for Chapter 16, Thackeray's Vanity Fair

"Betty advanced towards it on tiptoe, as if she were afraid to awake it-looked at it, and round the room, with an air of great wonder and satisfaction; took up the letter, and grinned intensely as she turned it round and over and finally carried it in to Miss Briggs's room below."

(The author in the following paragraph questions Betty's knowledge of whom the letter belongs to when Betty has received no schooling in her life. In the quotation above, how does the author show that Betty is in fact an uneducated servant?)

Image scanned by Gerald Ajam and captions by Tiaw Kay Siang and Sabrina Lim.