He put in his thumb
And he pulled out a plum,
And cried, “What a good boy am I!”
Jack Horner.
Whether it were from the effects of the warnings, or from that of native
good sense, from that time forward Mrs. Joseph Brownlow sobered down,
and became less distressing to her sister-in-law. Mary carried off her
brother to Wales, and the Acton and Ray party dispersed, while Dr. and
Mrs. Lucas came for a week, giving much relief to Mrs. Brownlow, who
could discuss the family affairs with them in a manner she deemed
unbecoming with Mrs. Acton or Miss Ogilvie. Had Caroline heard the
consultation, she would have acquitted Ellen of malice; and indeed her
Serene Highness was much too good to gossip about so near a connection,
and had only confided her wonder and perplexity at the strange
phenomenon to her favourite first cousin, who unfortunately was not
equally discreet.
With the end of the holidays finished also the trying series of first
anniversaries, and their first excitements of sorrow, so that it became
possible to be more calm and quiet.
Moreover, two correctives came of themselves to Caroline. The first was
Janet’s inordinate correspondence with Nita Ray, and the discovery that
the girl held herself engaged to stay with the sisters in November.
“Without asking me!” she exclaimed, aghast.
“I thought you heard us talking,” said Janet, so carelessly, that her
mother put on her dignity.
“I certainly had no conception of an invitation being given and accepted
without reference to me.”
“Come, now, Mother Carey,” said this modern daughter; “don’t be cross!
We really didn’t know you weren’t attending.”
“If I had I should have said it was impossible, as I say now. You can
never have thought over the matter!”
“Haven’t I? When I am doing no good here, only wasting time?”
“That is my fault. We will set to work at once steadily.”
“But my classes and my lectures!”
“You are not so far on but that our reading together will teach you
quite as much as lectures.”
Janet looked both sulky and scornful, and her mother continued--
“It is not as if we had not modern books, and I think I know how to read
them so as to be useful to you.”
“I don’t like getting behindhand with the world.”
“You can’t keep up even with the world without a sound foundation.
Besides, even if it were more desirable, the Rays cannot afford to keep
you, nor I to board you there.”
“I am to pay them by helping Miss Ray in her copying.”
“Poor Miss Ray!” exclaimed Carey, laughing. “Does she know your
handwriting?”
“You do not know what I can do,” said Janet, with dignity.
“Yes, I hope to see it for myself, for you must put this notion of
going to London out of your head. I am sure Miss Ray did not give the
invitation--no, nor second it. Did she, Janet?”
Janet blushed a little, and muttered something about Miss Ray being
afraid of stuck-up people.
“I thought so! She is a good, sensible person, whom grandmamma esteemed
very much; but she has never been able to keep her sister in order;
and as to trusting you to their care, or letting you live in their set,
neither papa nor grandmamma would ever have thought of it.”
“You only say so because her Serene Highness turns up her nose at
everything artistic and original.”
“Janet, you forget yourself,” Caroline exclaimed, in a tone which
quelled the girl, who went muttering away; and no more was ever heard
of the Ray proposal, which no doubt the elder sister at least had never
regarded as anything but an airy castle.
However, Caroline was convinced that the warnings against the intimacy
had not been so uncalled for as she had believed; for she found, when
she tried to tighten the reins, that her daughter was restive, and had
come to think herself a free agent, as good as grown up. Spirit was not,
however, lacking to Caroline, and when she had roused herself, she
made Janet understand that she was not to be disregarded or disobeyed.
Regular hours were instituted, and the difficulty of getting broken
into them again was sufficient proof to her that she had done wrong in
neglecting them. Armine yawned portentously, and declared that he could
not learn except at his own times; and Babie was absolutely naughty more
than once, when her mother suffered doubly in punishing her from the
knowledge of whose fault it was. However, they were good little things,
and it was not hard to re-establish discipline with them. After a little
breaking in, Babie gave it to her dolls as her deliberate opinion that
“Wegulawity settles one’s mind. One knows when to do what.”
Janet could not well complain of the regularity in itself, though she
did cavil at the actual arrangements, and they were altered all round
to please her, and she showed a certain contempt for her teacher in
the studies she resumed with her mother; but after the dictionary,
encyclopaedia and other authorities, including Mr. Ogilvie, proved
almost uniformly to be against her whenever there was a difference of
opinion, she had sense enough to perceive that she could still learn
something at home.
Moreover, after one or two of these references, Mr. Ogilvie offered to
look over her Latin and Greek exercises, and hear her construe on his
Saturday half-holidays, declaring that it would be quite a refreshment.
Caroline was shocked at the sacrifice, but she could not bear to affront
her daughter, so she consented; but as she thought Janet was not old
enough to need a chaperon, and as her boys did want her, she was hardly
ever present at the lessons.
Moreover, Mr. Ogilvie had a lecturer from London to give weekly lectures
on physical science to his boys, and opened the doors to ladies. This
was a great satisfaction, chiefly for the sake of Bobus and Jock, but
also for Janet’s and her mother’s. The difficulty was to beat up for
ladies enough to keep one another in countenance; but happily two
families in the country, and one bright little bride in the town,
were found glad to open their ears, so that Ellen had no just cause of
disapproval of the attendance of her sister and niece.
Ellen had more cause to sigh when Michaelmas came, and for the first
time taught poor Carey what money matters really meant. Throughout her
married life, her only stewardship had concerned her own dress and
the children’s; Mrs. Brownlow’s occasional plans of teaching her
housekeeping had always fallen through, Janet being always her
grandmamma’s deputy.
Thus Janet and nurse had succeeded to the management when poor Carey was
too ill and wretched to attend to it; and it had gone on in their hands
at the Pagoda. Janet was pleased to be respected accordingly by
her aunt, who always liked her the best, in spite of her much worse
behaviour, for were not her virtues her own, and her vices her mother’s?
Caroline had paid the weekly books, and asked no questions, until the
winding up of the executor’s business; and the quarterly settlement of
accounts made startling revelations that the balance at her bankers was
just eleven shillings and fourpence halfpenny, and what was nearly as
bad, the discovery was made in the presence of her fellow executor, who
could not help giving a low whistle. She turned pale, and gasped for
breath, in absolute amazement, for she was quite sure they were living
at much less expense than in London, and there had been no outgoings
worth mentioning for dress or journeys. What were they to do? Surely
they could not live upon less! Was it her fault?
She was so much distressed, that the good-natured Colonel pitied her,
and answered kindly--
“My good little sister, you were inexperienced. You will do better
another year.”
“But there’s nothing to go on upon!”
He reminded her of the rent for the London house, and the dividends that
must soon come in.
“Then it will be as bad as ever! How can we live more cheaply than we
do?”
“Ellen is an excellent manager, and you had better consult her on the
scale of your expenditure.”
Caroline’s spirit writhed, but before she had time to say anything, or
talk to Janet, the Colonel had heard his excellent housewife’s voice,
and called her into the council. She was as good as possible, too
serenely kind to manifest surprise or elation at the fulfilment of
her forebodings. To be convicted of want of economy would have been so
dreadful and disgraceful, that she deeply felt for poor Caroline, and
dealt with her tenderly and delicately, even when the weekly household
books were opened, and disclosed how much had been spent every week
in items, the head and front of which were oft repeated in old nurse’s
self-taught writing--
“Man...... Glas of beare. 1d.
Creme........... 3d.”
For had not the Colonel’s wife warned against the endless hospitality
of glasses of beer to all messengers; and had not unlimited cream with
strawberries and apple-tarts been treated as a kind of spontaneous
luxury produced at the Belforest farm agent’s? To these, and many other
small matters, Caroline was quite relieved to plead guilty, and to
promise to do her best by personal supervision; and Ellen set herself
to devise further ways of reduction, not realising how hopeless it is to
prescribe for another person’s household difficulties. It is not in the
nature of things that such advice should be palatable, and the proverb
about the pinching of the shoe is sure to be realised.
“Too many servants,” said prudence. “If old nurse must be provided
for--and she ought to have saved enough to do without--it would be much
better to pension her off, or get her into an almshouse.”
Caroline tried to endure, as she made known that she viewed nurse as a
sacred charge, about whom there must be no question.
Ellen quietly said--
“Then it is no use to argue, but she must be allowed no more discretion
in the housekeeping.”
“No, I shall do that myself,” said Caroline.
“An extravagant cook.”
“That may be my fault. I will try to judge of that.”
“Irregular hours.”
“They shall end with the holidays.”
There was still another maid, whom Ellen said was only kept to wait on
nurse, but who, Caroline said, did all their needlework, both making and
mending.
“That,” said Ellen, “I should have thought you and Janet could do. I do
nearly all our work with the girls’ help; I am happy to say that Jessie
is an excellent needlewoman, and Essie and Ellie can do something. I
only direct the nursery maid; I never trust anything to servants.”
“I could never bear not to trust people,” said Caroline.
Ellen sighed, believing that she would soon be cured of that; and Carey
added--
“On true principles of economy, surely it is better that Emma, who knows
how, should mend the clothes, than that I should botch them up in any
way, when I can earn more than she costs me!”
“Earn!”
“Yes; I can model, and I can teach. Was I not brought up to it?”
“Yes, but now it is impossible! It is not a larger income that you want,
but proper attention to details in the spending of it, as I will show
you.”
Whereupon Mrs. Brownlow, in her neat figures, built up a pretty little
economical scheme, based on a thorough knowledge of the subject.
Caroline tried to follow her calculations, but a dreaminess came over
her; she found herself saying “Yes,” without knowing what she was
assenting to; and while Ellen was discoursing on coals and coke, she was
trying to decide which of her casts she could bear to offer for sale,
and going off into the dear old associations connected with each,
so that she was obliged at the end, instead of giving an unqualified
assent, to say she would think it over; and Ellen, who had marked
her wandering eye, left off with a conviction that she had wasted her
breath.
Certainly she was not prepared for the proposal with which Mother Carey
almost rushed into the room the next day, just as she was locking up
her wine, and the Colonel lingering over his first glance at the day’s
Times.
“I know what to do! Miss James is not coming back? And you have not
heard of any one? Then, if you would only let me teach your girls with
mine! You know that is what I really can do. Yes, indeed, I would be
regular. I always was. You know I was, Robert, till I came here, and
didn’t quite know what I was about; and I have been regular ever since
the end of the holidays, and I really can teach.”
“My dear sister,” edged in the Colonel, as she paused for breath, “no
one questions your ability, only the fitness of--”
“I had thought over two things,” broke in Caroline again. “If you don’t
like me to have Jessie, and Essie, and Ellie, I would offer to prepare
little boys. I’ve been more used to them than to girls, and I know
Mr. Ogilvie would be glad. I could have the little Wrights, and Walter
Leslie, and three or four more directly, but I thought you might like
the other way better.”
“I can see no occasion for either,” said Ellen. “You need no increase in
income, only to attend to details.”
“And I had rather do what I can--than what I can’t,” said Caroline.
“Every lady should understand how to superintend her own household,”
said her Serene Highness.
“Granted; oh, granted, Ellen! I’m going to superintend with all my might
and main, but I don’t want to be my own upper servant, and I know I
should make no hand of it, and I had much rather earn something by my
wits. I can do it best in the way I was trained; and you know it is what
I have been used to ever since my own children were born.”
Ellen heaved a sigh at this obtuseness towards what she viewed as the
dignified and ladylike mission of the well-born woman, not to be the
bread-winner, but the preserver and steward, of the household. Here was
poor little Caroline so ignorant as actually to glory in having been
educated for a governess!
The Colonel, wanting to finish his Times in peace, looked up and said,
with the gracious tone he always used to his brother’s wife--
“My good little sister, it is very praiseworthy in you to wish to exert
yourself, and very kind and proper to desire to begin at home, but you
must allow us a little time to consider.”
She took this as a hint to retreat; and her Serene Highness likewise
feeling it a dismissal, tried at once to obviate all ungraciousness by
saying, “We are preserving our magnum bonums, Caroline dear; I will send
you some.”
“Magnum bonum!” gasped Caroline, hearing nothing but the name. “Do you
know--?”
“I know the recipe of course, and can give you an excellent one. I will
come over by-and-by and explain it to you.”
Caroline stood confounded. Had Joe revealed all to his brother? Was
it to be treated as a domestic nostrum? “Then you know what the magnum
bonum is?” she faltered.
“Are you asking as a philosopher,” said the Colonel, amused by her tone
“I don’t know what you mean, Colonel,” said his wife. “I offered
Caroline a basket of magnum bonums for preserving, and one would think I
had said something very extraordinary.”
“Perhaps it is my cockney ignorance,” said Caroline, beginning to
breathe freely, and thinking it would have been less oppressive if
Sua Serenita would have either laughed or scolded, instead of gravely
leading her past the red-baize door which shut out the lower regions
to the room where white armies of jam-pots stood marshalled, and in the
midst two or three baskets of big yellow plums, which awoke in her a
remembrance of their name, and set her laughing, thanking, and preparing
to carry home the basket.
This, however, as she was instantly reminded, was not country-town
manners. The gardener was to be sent with them, and Ellen herself would
copy out the recipe, and by-and-by bring it, with full directions.
Each lady felt herself magnanimously forbearing, as Caroline went
home to the lessons, and Ellen repaired to her husband on his morning
inspection of his hens and chickens.
“Poor thing,” she said, “there are great allowances to be made for her.
I believe she wishes to do right.”
“She knows how to teach,” rejoined the Colonel. “Bobus is nearly at the
head of the school, and Johnny has improved greatly since he has been so
much with her.”
“Johnny was always clever,” said his mother. “For my part, I had rather
see them playing at good honest games than messing about with that
museum nonsense. The boys did not do half so much mischief, nor destroy
so many clothes, before they were always running down to the Pagoda. And
as to this setting up a school, you would never consent to have Joe’s
wife doing that!”
“There is no real need.”
“None at all, if she only would--if she only knew how to attend to her
proper duties.”
“At the same time, I should be very glad of an excuse for making her
an advance, enough to meet the weekly bills, till her rent comes in, so
that she may not begin a debt. Could you not send the girls to her for a
few hours every day?”
“That’s not so bad as her taking pupils, for nobody need know that she
was paid for it,” said his wife, considering. “I don’t believe it will
answer, or that she will ever keep to it steadily; but it can hardly
hurt the children to try, if Jessie has an eye on Essie and Ellie. I
will not have them brought on too fast, nor taught Latin, and all that
poor little Babie is learning. I am sure it is dreadful to hear that
child talk. I am always expecting that she will have water on the
brain.”
The decision, which really involved a sacrifice and a certain sense of
risk on the part of these good people, was conveyed in a note, together
with a recipe for the preservation of magnum bonums, and a very liberal
cheque in advance for the first quarter of her three pupils, stipulating
that no others should be admitted, that the terms should be kept secret,
that the hours should be regular, and above all, that the pupils should
not be forced.
Caroline was touched and grateful, but could hardly keep a little satire
out of her promise that Essie and Ellie should not be too precocious.
She wrote her note of thanks, despatched it, and then, in the interest
of some arithmetical problems which she was working with Janet, forgot
everything else, till a sort of gigantic buzz was heard near at hand. A
sudden thought struck her, and out she darted into the hall. There stood
the basket in the middle of the table, just where the boys were wont to
look for refections of fruit or cake when they tumbled in from school.
Six boys and Babie hovered round, each in the act of devouring a
golden-green, egg-like plum, and only two or three remained in the
leaves at the bottom!
“Oh, the magnum bonums!” she cried; and Janet came rushing out in dismay
at the sound, standing aghast, but not exclaiming.
“Weren’t they for us?” asked Bobus, the first to get the stone out of
his mouth.
“No; oh, no!” answered his mother, as well as laughter would permit;
“they are your aunt’s precious plums, which she gave us as a great
favour, and I was going to be so good and learn to preserve and pickle
them! Oh, dear!”
“Never mind, Mother Carey,” mumbled her nephew Johnny, with his stone
swelling out his cheek, where it was tucked for convenience of speech;
“I’ll go and get you another jolly lot more.”
“You can’t,” grunted Robin; “they are all gathered.”
“Then we’ll get them off the old tree at the bottom of the orchard,
where they are just as big and yellow, and mamma will never know the
difference.”
“But they taste like soap!”
“That doesn’t matter. She’d no more taste a magnum bonum, before it is
all titivated up with sugar, than--than--than--”
“Babie’s head with brain sauce,” gravely put in Bobus, as his cousin
paused for a comparison. “It’s a wasting of good gifts to make jam of
these, for jam is nothing but a vehicle for sugar.”
“Then the grocer’s cart is jam,” promptly retorted Armine, “for I saw a
sugarloaf come in one yesterday.”
“Come on, then,” cried Jock, ripe for the mischief; “I know the tree!
They are just like long apricots. Aunt Ellen will think her plums have
been all a-growing!”
“No, no, boys!” cried his mother, “I can’t have it done. To steal your
aunt’s own plums to deceive her with!”
“We always may do as we like with that tree,” said Johnny, “because they
are so nasty, and won’t keep.”
“How nice for the preserves!” observed Bobus.
“They would do just as well to hinder Mother Carey from catching it.”
“No, no, boys; I ought to ‘catch it!’ It was all my fault for not
putting the plums away.”
“You won’t tell of us,” growled Robin, between lips that he opened wide
enough the next moment to admit one of three surviving plums.
“If I tell her I left them about in the boys’ way, she will arrive at
the natural conclusion.”
“Do they call those things magnum bonum?” asked Janet, as the boys
drifted away.
“Yes,” said her mother, looking at her rather wonderingly; and
adding, as Janet coloured up to the eyes, “My dear, have you any other
association with the name?”
Many a time Janet had longed to tell all she knew; now, when so good an
opportunity had come, all was choked back by the strange leaden weight
of reserve, and shame in that long reserve.
She opened her eyes and stared as stupidly at her mother as Robin
could have done, feeling an utter incapacity of making any reply; and
Caroline, who had for a moment thought she understood, was baffled,
and durst not pursue the subject for fear of betraying her own secret,
deciding within herself that Janet might have caught up the word without
understanding.
They were interrupted the next minute, and Janet ran away, feeling that
she had had an escape, yet wishing she had not.
Caroline did effectually shelter her nephews under her general term “the
boys,” and if their mother was not conciliated, their fellow-feeling
with her was strengthened, as well as their sense of honour. Nay, Johnny
actually spent the next half-holiday in walking three miles and back to
his old nurse, whom he beguiled out of a basket of plums--hard, little
blue things, as unlike magnum bonums as could well be, but which his
aunt received as they were meant, as full compensation; nay, she took
the pains to hunt up a recipe, and have them well preserved, in hopes of
amazing his mother.
It was indeed one difficulty that the two sisters-in-law had such
different notions of the aim and end of economy. The income at Kencroft
had not increased with the family, which numbered eight, for there were
two little boys in the nursery, and it was only by diligent housewifery
that Mrs. Brownlow kept up the somewhat handsome establishment she had
started with at her marriage. Caroline felt that she neither could nor
would have made herself such a slave to domestic details; yet this was
life and duty and interest to Ellen. Where one sister would be unheeding
of shabby externals, so that all her children might be free and on an
equality, if they did not go beyond her, in all enjoyments, physical,
artistic, or intellectual; the other toiled to keep up appearances, kept
her children under restraint and in the background, and made all sorts
of unseen sacrifices to the supposed duty of always having a handsome
dinner for whomsoever the Colonel might bring in, and keeping the
horses, carriages, and servants that she thought his due.
But then Ellen had a husband, and, as Caroline sighed to herself, that
made all the difference! and she was no Serene Highness, and had no
dignity.
The three girls from Kencroft did actually become pupils at the Folly,
but the beginnings were not propitious, for, in her new teacher’s eyes,
Jessie knew nothing accurately, but needed to have her foundations
looked to--to practise scales, draw square boxes, and work the four
first rules of arithmetic.
“Simple things,” complained Jessie to her mother, “that I used to do
when I was no bigger than Essie, and yet she is always teasing one about
how and why! She wanted me to tell why I carried one.”
“Have a little patience for the present, my dear, your papa wants to
help her just at present, and after this autumn we will manage for you
to have some real good music lessons.”
“But I don’t like wasting time over old easy things made difficult,”
sighed Jessie.
“It is very tiresome, my dear; but your papa wishes it, and you see,
poor thing, she can’t teach you more than she knows herself; and while
you are there, I am sure it is all right with Essie and Ellie.”
“She does not teach them a bit like Miss James,” said Jessie. “She makes
their sums into a story, and their spelling lessons too. It is like a
game.”
Indeed, Essie and Ellie were so willing to go off to their lessons every
morning, that their mother often thought it could not be all right,
and that the progress, which they undoubtedly made, must be by some
superficial trick; but as their father had so willed it, she submitted
to the present arrangement, deciding that “poor Caroline was just able
to teach little children.”
The presence of Essie and Ellie much assisted in bringing Babie back to
methodical habits; nor was she, in spite of her precocious intelligence,
too forward in the actual drill of education to be able to work with her
little cousins.
The incongruous elements were the two elder girls, who could by no means
study together, since they were at the two opposite ends of the scale;
but as Jessie was by no means aggressive, being in fact as sweet and
docile a shallow girl as ever lived, things went on peaceably, except
when Janet could not conceal her displeasure that Bobus would not share
her contempt for Jessie’s intellect.
If she told him that Jessie thought that the Odyssey was about a voyage
to Odessa, and was written by Alfred Tennyson, he only declared that
anything was better than being a spiteful cat; and when he came in from
school, and found his cousin in wild despair over the conversion
of 2,861 florins into half-crowns, he stood by, telling her every
operation, and leaving her nothing to do but to write down the figures.
He was reckless of Janet, who tried to wither them both by her scorn;
but Jessie looked up with her honest eyes, saying--
“I wish you hadn’t put it into my head, Janet, for now I must rub it out
and do it again, and it won’t be so hard now Bobus has shown me how.”
“No, no, Jessie,” said Bobus; “I wouldn’t be bullied.”
“For shame, Bobus,” said his sister; “how is she to learn anything in
that way?”
“And if she doesn’t?” said Bobus.
“That’s a disgrace.”
“A grace,” said provoking Bobus. “She is much nicer as she is, than you
will ever be.”
“Don’t talk such nonsense,” said Janet, with an elder sisterly air.
“It is not kind to encourage Jessie to think anyone can care for an
empty-headed doll.”
“Empty-headed dolls are all the go,” said Bobus. “Never mind, Jessie, a
girl’s business is to be pretty and good-humoured, not to stuff herself
with Latin and Greek. You should leave that to us poor beggars!”
“Yes, I know, that’s all your envy and jealousy,” retorted Janet.
All the time Jessie stood by, plump, gentle, and pretty, though with
a certain cloud of perplexity on her white open brow, and as her aunt
returned into the room, she said--
“I think my sum is right now, Aunt Caroline; but Bobus helped me. Must I
do it over again?”
“You shall begin with it to-morrow, my dear,” said her aunt; “then I
daresay it will go off easily.”
Jessie thanked with an effusion of gratitude which made her prettier
than ever, and then was claimed by Bobus to help him in the making of
some paper bags that he needed for some of his curiosities.
Janet liked to fancy that it was beauty versus genius that made Jessie
the greater favourite. She had not taken into account that she was
always too much engrossed with her own concerns to be helpful, while
Jessie’s pretty dexterous hands were always at everyone’s service,
and without in the least entering into the cause of science, she was
invaluable in the museum, whenever her ideas of neatness and symmetry
were not in too absolute opposition to the requirements of system.
The two little ones, Essie and Ellie, were equally graceful, or indeed
still more so, as being still in their kittenhood, and their attitudes
were so charming as to revive their aunt’s artistic instincts.
All the earlier part of the year, when her time was her own, it had been
mere wretchedness and heart-sickness to think of the art which had given
her husband so much pleasure, and, but for Allen, the studio would
never have been arranged. But no sooner was her time engrossed, than
the artist fever awoke in her, and all the time she could steal by early
rising, or on wet afternoons, and birthday holidays, was devoted to her
clay.
Before the end of the autumn she had sent up to Mr. Acton some lovely
little groups of children, illustrating Wordsworth’s poems. She had been
taught anatomy enough to make her work superior to that of most women,
and Mr. Acton found no difficulty in disposing of them to a porcelain
manufactory, to be copied in Parian, bringing in a sum that made her
feel rich.
Vistas opened before her sanguine eyes of that clay educating her son
for the Magnum Bonum, her great thought. Her boys must be brought up to
be worthy of the quest, high-minded, disinterested, and devoted, as well
as intellectual and religious. So said their father; and thus the Magnum
Bonum had become very nearly a religion to her, giving her a definite
aim and principle.
Unfortunately there was not much in her present surroundings to lead her
higher. The vicar, Mr. Rigby, was a dull, weak man, of a wornout type,
a careful visitor of the sick and poor, but taking little heed to the
educated, except as subscribers and Sunday-school teachers. Carey had
done little in the first capacity, Janet had refused to act in the
latter.
His sermons were very sleepy performances, except for a tendency to
jumble up metaphors, that kept the audience from the Folly just awake
enough to watch for them. The hearer was proud who could repeat by heart
such phrases as “let us not, beloved brethren, as gaudy insects, flutter
out life’s little day, bound to the chariot wheels of vanity, whirling
in the vortex of dissipation, until at length we lie moaning over
the bitter dregs of the intoxicating draught.” Some of these became
household proverbs at “the Folly,” under the title of “Rigdum
Funnidoses,” and might well be an extreme distress to the good,
reverent, and dutiful Jessie.
Mrs. Rigby was an inferior woman, a sworn member of the Coffinkey
clique, admiring and looking up to her Serene Highness as the great lady
of the place, and wearing an almost abject manner when receiving good
counsels from her. Neither of them commanded respect, nor were they
likely to change the belief, which prevailed at the Folly, that all
ability resided among the London clergy.