"King George he was born in the month of October,--
'Tis a sin for a subject that month to be sober!"
"I'll forbid him my house!" cries Father, starting up. "I'll send a
bullet through his head! I'll October him, and sober him too, if he has
not a care! Fan! Where's Fan? Go to the spinnet, girl, and sing me a
right good Tory song, to take the taste of that abominable stuff out of
my mouth."
"Nay, Brother," saith my Aunt Kezia, who was pinning a piece of work on
the table, "surely a man may use respect to the powers that be, though
they be not the powers he might wish to be?"
"`Powers that be!'" saith Father. "Powers that shouldn't be, you mean.
I'll tell you what, Kezia,--you may have been bred a Tory, but you were
born a Puritan. Whereon earth you got it--! As for that fellow, I'll
forbid him my house. `King George,' forsooth! Let me hear one of you
call the Elector of Hanover by that name, and I'll--I'll--. Come along,
Fan, and give me a Tory song."
So Fanny sat down to the spinnet, and played the new song that all the
Tories are so fond of. How often she made Britain arise from out the
azure waves, I am sure I don't know, but she, and Father with her, sang
it so many times that all that day I had "Britons never shall be
slaves!" ringing in my ears till I heartily wished they would be slaves
and have done with it.
At night, when we were going to bed, after Father had blessed us, Hatty
runs round to his back and whispers in his ear.
"Don't send Ambrose Catterall away, there's a good Father!" says she:
"there will be two of us old maids as it is."
Father laughed, and pinched Hatty's ear. So I saw my gentlewoman had
been thinking the same thing I had. But I don't think she ought to have
said it out.
Stay, now! Why should it be worse to say things than to think them? Is
it as bad to think them as to say them? Oh dear! but if one were for
ever sifting one's thoughts in that way,--why, it would be just
dreadful! Not many people are careful about their words, but one's
thoughts!
No, I don't think I could do it, really. I suppose my Aunt Kezia would
say I ought. I do so dislike my Aunt Kezia's oughts. She always thinks
you ought to do just what you do not want. If only people would say,
now and then, that you ought to eat plum-pudding, or you ought to dance,
or you ought to wear jewels! But no! it is always you ought to sew, or
you ought to carry some broken victuals to old Goody Branscombe, or you
ought to be as sweet as a rosebud when Hatty says things at you.
Stop! would it be so if I always wanted to do the things I ought? I
suppose not. Then why don't I?
But why ought I? There's another question.
I wish we either wanted to do what we ought, or else that we ought to do
what we want!
I was obliged to stop last night all at once, because I heard Hatty
coming up the garret stairs. I always write in the garret and keep my
book there, so that none of the girls shall get hold of it--Hatty
particularly. She would make such shocking game of it. I had only just
put my book away safely when in she came.
"What on earth are you doing up here?" cried she.
"What are you doing?" said I.
"Looking for you," she says.
"Then why should not I be looking for you?" said I.
"Because you weren't, Miss Caroline Courtenay!" and she makes a swimming
courtesy. "Oh yes, you don't need to tell me you have a secret, my
young gentlewoman. I know as well as if I had seen it. O Pussy, have
you come too? Do you know what it is, Pussy? Does she come up here to
read her love-letters--does she? Oh, how charming! Wouldn't I like to
see them! How does she get them, Pussy? She has been rather fond of
going to see Elspie this past week or two; is that it, Pussy? Won't you
tell me, my pretty, pretty cat?"
"Hatty, don't be so absurd!" cried I.
"We know, don't we, Pussy?" says Hatty in a provoking whisper to the cat
in her arms. "I thought there would be somebody at Carlisle that she
would be sorry to leave--didn't you, Pussy-cat? What is he like, Pussy?
Tall and dark, I'll wager, with a pair of handsome mustachios, and the
most beautiful black eyes you ever saw! Won't that be about it, Pussy?"
I could have thrown the cat at her. How could any mortal creature be
sweet, or keep quiet, talked to in that way? I flew out.
"Hatty, you are the most vexatious tease that ever lived! Do, for
pity's sake, go down and let me alone. You know perfectly well it is
all stuff and nonsense!"
"Oh, how angry she is, my pretty pussy!" says Hatty, hiding her laughing
face behind the cat. "It was all nonsense, you know; but really, when
she gets into such a tantrum, I begin to think I must have hit the
white. What do you say, Pussy?"