HOW NANCY RECKONED UP THE COMPANY.
Nancy Levett herself, pretty and merry, prattling, rattling Nancy, not
grown a bit, and hardly taller than my shoulder. I held her out at
arm's length.
"You here, Nancy?"
Then we kissed again.
"And not a bit changed, Nancy?"
"And oh! so changed, Kitty. So tall and grand. Come to my mother."
Lady Levett was standing close by with Sir Robert, who took me by the
shoulders and kissed my cheeks, forehead and lips in fatherly fashion.
"Gadso!" he cried. "This is brave indeed. Things are likely to go well
at Epsom. We have got back our Kitty, wife."
Lady Levett was colder. Perhaps she had misgivings on what had been
done with me for the last twelvemonth. And then I, who had gone away a
simple, rustic maid, was now in hoops, patches and powder.
"Kitty will tell us presently," she said, "I doubt not what she has
done, and under whose protection she is travelling."
Then I hastened to present Mrs. Esther, who stood aside, somewhat
embarrassed.
"Madam," I said, "I present to you my benefactress and guardian, Mrs.
Esther, to whose care I was entrusted by my uncle. Dear aunt, this is
my Lady Levett. Mrs. Esther Pimpernel, madam, hath done me the singular
kindness of calling me her niece."
"My niece and daughter by adoption," said that kind lady. "Your
ladyship will be pleased, out of your goodness of heart, to hear
the best report of this dear child's health and conduct. The good
principles, my lady, which she learned of you and of her lamented
father, have borne fruit in virtues of obedience and duty."
Both ladies made a deep reverence. Then said Lady Levett--"I assure
you, my dear madam, I looked for nothing less in this dear child.
From such a father as was hers, could aught but good descend? Madam,
I desire your better acquaintance. For Kitty's sake, I hope we may be
friends."
"Why," said Sir Robert, "we are friends already. Kitty, thou art grown:
thou art a fine girl. I warrant we shall have breaking of hearts before
all is done. Epsom Wells was never so full of gallants. Well, breaking
of hearts is rare sport, and seldom hurts the men, though they make so
great a coil about it in their rhymes and nonsense. But have a care,
both of you: sometimes the girls get their own little cockleshells of
hearts broken in earnest."
"I should like to see the man among them all who could break my heart,"
said Nancy pertly, laughing.
"Yours?" her father asked, tapping her pretty rosy cheek. "It is such a
little one, no one can find it: nevertheless, lass, it is big enough to
carry all thy father's in it, big as he is."
Then we began to ask questions all together. I to inquire after the
village and the hall, the church, the ponies, the garden, the hounds,
the fruit, all the things we used to think about: and Will, they
told me, was at home, but was coming to the Wells for certain races
in which he would himself ride. Harry Temple was gone to London, but
would perhaps come to Epsom as soon as he knew who was there. Why had I
written not one single letter?
I blushed and hung my head. I could not tell the truth, for the sake of
Mrs. Esther, how I was ashamed at first to speak of the place in which
I found myself, and afterwards was afraid; but I should have to explain
my silence.
"It was not," I stammered, "that I was ungrateful to your ladyship for
all your kindness. But things were strange at first, and there was
nothing that I could take any pleasure in telling your ladyship. And
a London letter from a simple girl, who can send no news of the great
world, is a worthless thing to deliver by the post."
"Nay, child," said Lady Levett, "we should not have grudged the charge
for good tidings of thy welfare."
"Our Kitty," said Mrs. Esther, colouring a little, for it is never
pleasant to help at concealing, dissembling, or falsifying things,
"has had a busy time of late. Your ladyship knows, doubtless, that
her education was not completed. We have had masters and teachers of
dancing, music, deportment, and the like during the last few months,
and I trust that we shall find she will do credit to the instruction
she has received. Meanwhile I have, for reasons which it would not
interest your ladyship to learn, been living in great retirement. We
had a lodging lately in Red Lion Street, not far from the Foundling
Hospital, where the air is good and the situation quiet."
We fell, presently, into a sort of procession. First went Lady Levett
and Mrs. Esther (I overheard the latter speaking at length of her
father, the Lord Mayor, of her grandfather, also the Lord Mayor, and
of her last visit to Epsom), then came Nancy, Sir Robert, who held my
hand, and myself. The music, which had stopped during prayers, began
again now. The Terrace was crowded with the visitors, and Nancy began
to point them out to me as we walked along.
"Look, child--oh! how beautiful you have grown!--there is Mr. Pagoda
Tree--it is really Samuel Tree, or Obadiah Tree, or, I think, Crabapple
Tree, but they all call him Pagoda Tree: he has made a quarter of a
million in Bengal, and is come running to Bath, Epsom and Tunbridge, in
search of a wife. With all his money I, for one, would not have him,
the yellow little Nabob! He has five-and-twenty blacks at his lodgings,
and they say he sticks dinner-knives into them if his curry be not hot
enough. There goes the Dean of St. Sepulchre's. He is come to drink the
waters, which are good for a stomach enfeebled by great dinners; there
is no better fox-hunter in the county, and no finer judge of port. Pity
to be seventy years old when one has all the will and the power to go
on doing good to the Christian Church by fox-hunting and drinking"--he
was certainly a very red-faced divine, who looked as if this world
was more in his thoughts than the next, where, so far as we know,
fox-hunting will not be practised and port will not be held in esteem.
"You see yonder little fribble, my dear--do not look at him, or it will
make him think the better of himself: he is a haberdasher from town,
who pretends to be a Templar. A fribble, Kitty--oh! you innocent,
tall, beautiful creature!--a fribble is a thing made up of rags, wig,
ruffles, wind, froth, amber cane, paint, powder, coat-skirts and sword.
Nothing else, I assure you. No brains, no heart, no ears, no taste,
nothing. There are many fribbles at the Wells, who will dance with you,
talk to you, and--if you have enough money--would like to run away with
you. Don't throw yourself away on a fribble, Kitty. And don't run away
with anybody. Nothing so uncomfortable.
"That gallant youth in the red-coat is an officer, who had better be
with his colours in America than showing his scarlet at the Wells. Yet
he is a pretty fellow, is he not? Here are more clergymen----" One of
them somewhat reminded me of my uncle, for he wore, like him, a full
wig, a cassock of silk, and a flowing gown; also, he carried his head
with the assurance which belongs to one who is a teacher of men, and
respects his own wisdom. But he differed from my uncle in being sleek,
which the famous Chaplain of the Fleet certainly was not. He dropped
his eyes as he went, inwardly rapt, no doubt, by heavenly thoughts.
"That," Nancy went on, "is the great Court preacher, the Reverend
Bellamour Parolles, Master of Arts. The shabby divine beside him is the
Vicar of Sissinghurst, in Kent, who is here to drink the waters for a
complaint that troubles the poor man. What a difference!"
The country parson went dressed in a grey-striped calamanco nightgown;
he wore a wig which had once been white, but was now, by the influence
of this uncertain climate, turned to a pale orange; his brown hat
was encompassed by a black hatband; his bands, which might have been
cleaner, decently retired under the shadow of his chin; his grey
stockings were darned with blue worsted. As they walked together it
seemed to me that the country parson was saying to the crowd: "You
see--I am in rags; I go in darns, patches, and poverty; yet by my
sacred profession and my learning, I am the equal of my brother in
silk." While the more prosperous one might have been thought to say:
"Behold the brotherhood and equality of the Church, when I, the great
and fashionable, know no difference between myself and my humble
brethren!"
In the afternoon and evening there was, however, this difference, that
the town parson was seen at the Assembly Rooms among the ladies, while
his country brother might have been seen at the Crown, over a pipe and
a brown George full of strong October.
Then Nancy went on to point out more of the visitors. There were
merchants, well known on the Royal Exchange; courtiers from St.
James's; country gentlemen, with their madams, brave in muslin pinners
and sarsnet hoods, from estates remote from the great town, where they
had never ceased to consider themselves the feudal lords of the people
as well as the land: there were younger sons full of talk about horses
and hounds: there were doctors in black, with bag-wigs: there were
lawyers in vacation, their faces as full of sharpness as is the face of
a fox: there were young fellows not yet launched upon the fashionable
world, who looked on with the shyness and impudence of youth, trying to
catch the trick of dress, manner and carriage which marks the perfect
beau; there were old fellows, like Mr. Walsingham, who sat on the
benches, or ran about, proud of their activity, in attendance on the
ladies. It was indeed a motley crew.
"They say that Epsom has come into fashion again," Nancy went on. "I
know not. Tunbridge is a dangerous rival. Yet this year the place is
full. That young man coming to speak to me you may distinguish by your
acquaintance, my dear."
What a distinction! "He is--I hope your lordship is well this
morning--he is the young Lord Eardesley, whose father is but just dead.
He is a Virginian by birth, and all his fortune, with which the family
estates have been recovered, was made by tobacco on his plantations. He
has hundreds of negro slaves, besides convicts. Yet he is of grave and
serious disposition, and abhors the smell of a pipe. Peggy Baker thinks
to catch his lordship. Yet coronets are not so easily won."
She stopped again to speak to some ladies of her acquaintance.
"Well, my dear, as for our manner of life here, it is the same as at
all watering-places. We dress and undress: we meet at church, and on
the Terrace and the New Parade, and the Assembly Rooms: we go to the
Downs to see races before dinner and after dinner: we talk scandal: we
say wicked things about each other: we try to catch the eyes of the
men: we hate each other with malice and uncharitableness: we raffle: we
gamble: we listen to the music: we exchange pretty nothings with the
beaux: we find out all the stories about everybody here: and we dance
at the Assembly."
She stopped to breathe.
"This is a rattle," said Sir Robert, "which never stops--like the clack
of the water-wheel. Go on, Nan."
"One of our amusements," she went on, tossing her little head, "is
to buy strawberries, cherries, vegetables, salad, fowls and ducks of
the higglers who bring them to the market, or carry them round to
the houses of the town. The gentlemen, I observe, derive a peculiar
satisfaction in chucking those of the higglers who are young and
good-looking under the chin. This, I confess, is a pleasure which I
cannot for my own part understand."
"Saucy baggage!" said her father.
"You and I, Kitty," she continued, "who do not want to chuck farmers'
daughters under the chin, may, when we are tired of the races or the
promenade, take an airing in a coach, or watch the raffling, or the
card-players. Here they play cards all day long, except on Sunday. Or
we may go to the book-shop and hear the latest scandal: or we may go
home and trim our own things and talk about frocks, and patches, and
poetry, and lace, and lovers. But, for Heaven's sake, Kitty, do not, in
this censorious place, make that pretty face too cheap, and let no one
follow you on the Terrace but the best of the company."
"Good advice," said Sir Robert. "This girl of mine has got her father's
head."
"As for cards," Nancy went on, taking no notice of her father's
interruption, "the tables are always laid in the Assembly Room: the
ladies mostly play at quadrille, and the gentlemen at whist; but there
are tables for hazard, lansquenet, faro, and baccarat, where all comers
are welcome, provided they have got money to lose and can lose it
without also losing their temper, a thing we women throw away daily,
and lose without regarding it, so cheap and abundant a commodity it
is. My dear, so long as I value my face, I will never touch the odious
delightful things. Yet the joy of winning your enemy's money! Oh! oh!
And the dreadful grief to lose your own!
"There is a concert this evening. I would not advise you to attend it,
but to wait for Monday's ball--there to make your first appearance. I
shall go, because some of my swains are going to play with the paid
musicians; and of course I look to see them break down and spoil the
whole music, to their great confusion.
"But Monday--Monday is our day of days. All Sunday we think about it,
and cannot say our prayers for thinking of the dear delightful day. And
what the clergyman preaches about none of us know, for wishing the day
was here. On Monday we have a great public breakfast to begin with: the
gentry come to it from all the country-side, with the great people from
Durdans: in fine weather we breakfast under the trees upon the Terrace
while the music plays. You will find it pleasant to take your chocolate
to the strains of flute and clarionet, French horn and hautboy; the
sunshine raises the spirits, and the music fills the head with pretty
fancies. Besides, every girl likes to be surrounded by tall fellows
who, though we care not a pin for one of them, are useful for providing
conversation, cakes, and creams, telling stories, saying gallant
things, fetching, carrying, and making Peggy Baker jealous. On Monday,
too, there are always matches on the Downs: we pretend to be interested
in the horses: we come back to dinner and a concert: in the afternoon
some of the gentlemen give tea and chocolate; and at six o'clock, the
fiddles tune up--oh, the delicious scraping!--we all take our places:
and then begins--oh! oh! oh!--the dear, delightful ball! My child, let
Miss Peggy Baker dress her best, put on her finest airs, and swim about
with her most languishing sprawl, I know who shall outshine her, and be
the Queen of the Wells."
"Yourself, dear Nancy?"
"No; not myself, dear Nancy," she replied, imitating. "Oh! you well
may blush for shame, pretty hypocrite! 'Tis yourself, dear Kitty, that
I mean. You shall burst upon their astonished gaze like Venus rising
from the sea in our picture at home, only better dressed than that poor
creature!"
Just then a young lady, with the largest hoop I had ever seen, with
patches and powder, and accompanied by three or four gentlemen,
came slowly along the walk. As she drew near she looked at me with
curiosity. She was a tall girl--nearly as tall as myself--with features
rather larger than ordinary, and as she moved I understood what Nancy
meant by languishing and swimming.
Nancy ran to meet her, taking her by both hands, and affecting a mighty
joy.
"Dear Miss Peggy," she began, "I am charmed to see you looking so well
and lovely. How that dress becomes your shape! with what an air sits
that hat!"
"Oh, Miss Nancy!" Miss Peggy swam and languished, agitating her fan
and half shutting her eyes, which were very large and limpid. "Praise
from such a judge of beauty and dress as yourself is rare indeed. What
should we poor women do without the discrimination of our own sex. Men
have no discernment. A well-dressed woman and a draggletail are all one
to them."
"Not all men, dear Miss Peggy," continued Nancy, her eyes sparkling.
"Mr. Walsingham was only saying this morning that you are, like
himself, a proof of the salubrity of the Wells, since it is now the
fifth season----"
"The third, dear child," Miss Peggy interrupted, with a tap of her fan
on Nancy's knuckles--indeed she deserved it. "I am very much obliged to
Mr. Walsingham, whose tongue is free with all the ladies at the Wells.
It is but yesterday since he said of you----"
"This is my friend, Miss Kitty Pleydell," said Nancy quickly, rubbing
her knuckles. "Kitty, my dear, you have heard of the beautiful Peggy
Baker, last year the Toast of Tunbridge Wells, and the year before
the Toast of Bath. Up to the present she has been our pride. On
Monday evening you shall see her in her bravest attire, the centre of
attraction, envied by us poor homely creatures, who have to content
ourselves with the rustic beaux, the parsons, the lawyers, and the
half-pay officers."
Now, whether this artful girl did it on purpose, or whether it was
by accident, I know not: but every word of this speech contained an
innuendo against poor Miss Peggy. For it was true that she had been for
two years following a Toast, but she was still unmarried, and without
a lover, though she had so many men for ever in her train; and it was
also true that among her courtiers at Epsom, the little band who held
back while the ladies talked, there were, as I afterwards learned,
at least three rustic beaux, two lawyers, a fashionable parson, and
six half-pay officers. However, she disguised whatever resentment she
might have felt, very kindly bade me welcome to the Wells, hoped that I
should enjoy the place, told Nancy that her tongue run away with her,
and that she was a saucy little baggage, tapped her knuckles for the
second time with her fan, and moved away.
When Nancy had finished telling me of the amusements of the place and
the people--I omit most of what she said as to the people because,
although doubtless true, the stories did not redound to their credit,
and may now very well be forgotten--we left the Terrace, Sir Robert now
joining madam, and looked at the stalls and booths which were ranged
along the side. They were full of pretty things exhibited for sale,
and instead of rude prentice boys for salesmen they were good-looking
girls, with whom some of the gentlemen were talking and laughing.
"More chin-chucking, my dear," said Nancy.
It was the fashion to have a lottery at almost every stall, so that
when you bought anything you received a ticket with your purchase,
which entitled you to a chance of the prize. When you chose a bottle
of scent, the girl who gave it you handed with it a ticket which gave
you the chance of winning five guineas: with a pair of stockings came
a ticket for a ten-guinea lottery. It was the same thing with all the
shops. A leg of mutton bought at the butcher's might procure for the
purchaser the sum of twenty guineas; the barber who dressed your hair
presented you with a chance for his five-guinea draw; the very taverns
and ordinaries had their lotteries, so that for every sixpenny plate
of boiled beef a 'prentice had his chance with the rest, and might
win a guinea; you ordered a dozen oysters, and they came with the
fishmonger's compliments and a ticket for his lottery, the first prize
of which would be two guineas, the drawing to take place on such a day,
with auditors appointed to see all fair, and school children named to
pull out the tickets; even the woman who sold apples and cherries in
a basket loudly bellowed along the street that she had a half-crown
draw, a five-shilling draw, and so on. Every one of us treasured up
the tickets, but I never met any who won. Yet we had the pleasure of
attending the drawing, dreaming of lucky numbers, and spending our
prizes beforehand. I am sure that Nancy must have spent in this way
many hundreds of pounds during the season, and by talking over all the
fine things she would buy, the way in which their exhibition upon her
little figure would excite the passion of envy in the breast of Peggy
Baker and others, and her own importance thus bedecked, she had quite
as much pleasure out of her imaginary winnings as if they had been
real ones. It is a happy circumstance for mankind that they are able
to enjoy what they never can possess, and to be, in imagination, the
great, the glorious, the rich, the powerful personages which they can
never, in the situation wherein Providence has placed them, hope to
become.
Presently we went home to dinner, which was served for us by Cicely
Crump. After dinner, while Mrs. Esther dozed, Cicely told me her
history. Her father, she said, had been a substantial tradesman in
Cheapside, and though little of stature, was in his youth a man of
the most determined courage and resolution. When only just out of
his apprenticeship he fell in love with a beautiful young lady named
Jenny Medlicott (daughter of the same Alderman Medlicott whose ruin
brought poor Mrs. Esther to destruction): as he knew that he could
never get the consent of the alderman, being poor and of obscure birth,
and knowing besides that all is fair in love, this lad of mettle
represented himself to his nymph as a young gentleman of the Temple,
son of a country squire. In this disguise he persuaded her to run away
with him, and they were married. But when they returned to London they
found that the alderman was ruined, and gone off his head. Therefore
they separated, the lady going to Virginia with Lady Eardesley, mother
of the young lord now at Epsom, and the husband going back to the shop.
After the death of poor Jenny he married again. "And," said Cicely,
"though my mother is no gentlewoman, one cannot but feel that she
might have been Miss Jenny Medlicott herself had things turned out
differently. And that makes all of us hold up our heads. And as for
poor father, he never forgot his first wife, and was always pleased to
relate how he ran away with her all the way to Scotland, armed to the
teeth, and ready, for her sake, to fight a dozen highwaymen. Such a
resolute spirit he had!"
Then Nancy Levett came, bringing with her a milliner, Mrs. Bergamot.
"Kitty," she cried, "I cannot rest for thinking of your first ball, and
I have brought you Mrs. Bergamot to advise. My dear, you _must_ be well
dressed." Then she whispered: "Do you want money, dear? I have some."
I told her I had as much as a hundred and twenty guineas, at which she
screamed with delight.
"Kitty!" she cried again, clasping my hands. "A hundred guineas! a
hundred guineas! and twenty more! My dear, that odd twenty, that poor
overflowing of thy rich measure, is the utmost I could get for this
season at the Wells. Oh! happy, happy girl, to have such a face, such
a shape, such eyes, such hair, such hands and feet, and a hundred and
twenty guineas to set all off!"
She sat down, clasped her hands, and raised her eyes to Heaven as if in
thankfulness. I think I see her now, the little dainty merry maid, so
arch, so apt, sitting before me with a look which might be of envy or
of joy. She had eyes so bright, a mouth so little, dimples so cunning,
a cheek so rosy and a chin so rounded, that one could not choose but
love her.
"Miss Pleydell," she said to the milliner, "has not brought all her
things from London. You must get what she wants at once, for Monday's
ball. Now, let us see."
Then we held a parliament of four, counting Cicely, over the great
question of my frocks. Nancy was prime minister, and did all the
talking, turning over the things.
"Let me see, Mrs. Bergamot. Fetch us, if you have them--what you
have--in flowered brocades--all colours--violet, pink, Italian posies,
rose, myrtle, jessamine, anything; a watered tabby would become you,
Kitty; any painted lawns,--silks and satins would be almost too old for
you: do not forget the patches _à la grecque_--Kitty, be very careful
of the patches; gauzes, what you have, Mrs. Bergamot; we want more
hoods, a feathered muff, stomacher, Paris nets, _eau de Chypre_ or _eau
de luce_, whichever you have; ear-rings are no use to you, my poor
child. Pity that they did not pierce your ears: see the little drops
dangling at mine. At any rate, thank Heaven that we neither of us want
vermilion for the cheeks. Poor Peggy! she paints these two years and
more. Ruffs, Mrs. Bergamot, and tippets, cardinals, any pretty thing in
sarsnets, and what you have in purple. Kitty, purple is your colour.
You shall have a dress all purple for the next ball. Ah! if I could
carry purple! But you, Kitty, with your height and figure--stand up,
child--why, she will be Juno herself!"
"Truly," said the dressmaker, "as for Miss Pleydell, purple has come
into fashion in pudding-time, as folk say."
"A pretty woman," Nancy went on, examining me as if I had been a dummy,
"not a pretty 'little thing' like me, is as rare in Epsom as a black
swan or a white blackbird, or green yellow-hammer, or a red blue tit."
When the dressmaker was gone, and we were left alone, Nancy began
again, out of her great experience, to talk of the place we were in.
"My dear," she said, "before one's father one cannot say all that one
would wish"--could such wisdom be possible at seventeen-and-a-half?
"This is a very shocking and wicked place; we used to be taught that
girls ought to sit in a corner, after they had put on their best
things, and wait to be spoken to, and not to think about attracting the
men; and not, indeed, to think about the men at all, save in their own
room, where they might perhaps pray that if there were any men in the
world not addicted to gambling, drinking, cursing, hunting, fighting,
and striking, those men might be led by Heaven to cast eyes of love
upon them. Oh!"--here she held up her hands and shook her head just
like a woman four times her age, and steeped in experience--"in this
place it is not long that the girls sit in a corner, and, indeed, I do
not greatly love corners myself; but the very wives, the matrons, the
married women, my dear,"--her voice rose with each word till it had
mounted nearly to the top of the possible scale,--"are coquettes, who
interfere with the girls, and would have the gallants dangling at their
heels. As for their husbands, they are the last persons considered
worthy of their notice; they put on their dresses and deck themselves
out to please anybody rather than the persons whom it should be their
only study to please."
"Nancy," I whispered, "when you are married, will you never, never
dress to please anybody but your husband?"
"Why," she replied, "my father, my mother, my children (if I have any),
my friends will be pleased to see me go fine. But not for lovers--oh!"
We agreed that would-be lovers should be received and properly dealt
with before marriage.
"Bashfulness, here," continued the pretty moralist, "is--Heaven help
us!--lack of breeding; what goes down is defiance of manners and
modesty. Propriety is laughed at; noise is wit; laughter is repartee;
most of the women gamble; nearly all are in debt; nobody reads anything
serious; and we backbite each other perpetually."
I know not what had put her in so strange a mood for moralising.
"However," she said, "now that you are come, we shall get on better.
I have made up my mind that you are to be the Toast of the season. I
shall set you off, because you are brown and I am fair; you are tall,
and I am short; you are grave, and I am merry; you are thoughtful,
and I am silly; you have brown eyes, and I have blue. We will have
none but the best men about us; we will set such an example as will
shame the hoydens of girls and tame the Mohocks among the men. Miss
Lamb of Hackney, who thinks herself a beauty, will then be ashamed
to jump about and scream at the Assembly with nothing over her skinny
shoulders. Peggy Baker shall have after her none but the married men
(who are of no possible use except to spoil a girl's reputation),
although she sighs and swims and sprawls with her eyes half shut.
Do you know that she sat for her portrait to Zincke, at Marylebone
Gardens, as Anne Boleyn, and was painted with eyelashes down to the
corners of her mouth?"
"Nancy," I cried, "you are jealous of Miss Peggy Baker."
She laughed, and talked of something else. From this I conjectured
that Peggy had said or reported something which offended her. What had
really been said, I learned afterwards, was that Nancy was running
after Lord Eardesley, which was unkind as well as untrue.
"Last year," she said, "after you went away, nothing would serve my
mother but a visit to Bath. It is not so gay as Tunbridge Wells,
because the company are mostly country folk, like ourselves, who stand
upon their dignity; but it is better than this place, where there
are so many London cits that it passes one's patience, sometimes, to
see their manners"--really, Nancy must have been seriously put out.
"However, I dare say Bath is as wicked as any of the watering towns,
when you come to know it. I liked the bathing. What do you think,
Kitty, of everybody promenading in the water up to their chins--that
is to say, the little people, like me, up to their noses (only I wore
pattens to make myself higher), and the tall men up to their shoulders,
in hot water? Everybody frolicking, flirting, and chattering, while
japanned trays float about covered with confectionery, tea, oils, and
perfumes for the ladies; and when you go away, your chair is nothing
but a tub full of hot water, in which you are carried home. We stayed
there all July and August, though my mother would have kept me, if she
could, from the baths till I was bigger. Harry Temple was there, too,
part of the time."
"And how doth Harry?"
"He is a good honest fellow," said Nancy, "though conceited and a prig;
his mouth full of learned words, and his head full of books. He seemed
to pine after your departure, Kitty, but soon recovered himself, and
now eats and drinks again as before. He found some congenial spirits
from Oxford at Bath, and they used to talk of Art, and pictures (when
any one was listening), and bronzes, and all sorts of things that we
poor people know nothing of."
Then she told me how Harry had made a poem upon me, after my departure,
which he turned into Latin, Greek, and Italian, and had given Nancy a
copy. And how Will had christened one pup Kitty, and another Pleydell,
and a third Kitty Pleydell, and was casting around how to give a fourth
puppy my name as well.
It seemed so long ago that I had almost forgotten poor rustic Will,
with his red face, his short sturdy figure, and his determination.
"Dear Kitty," said Nancy, "if thou couldst take a fancy for our
Will--he is a brave lad, though dull of parts and slow of apprehension.
As for Harry"--here she stopped, and blushed.
I remembered my secret, and blushed as well (but for guilt and shame);
while poor Nancy blushed in maiden modesty.
"Dear Nancy," I replied, kissing her, "believe me, but I could never
marry your brother Will. And as for Harry----"
"As for Harry," she echoed, with downcast eyes.
It was easy to read her secret, though she could not guess mine.
"As for Harry," I said, "where could he be better bestowed than----"
Here I kissed her again, and said no more, because between two women
what more need be said?
Alas! I had quite forgotten--indeed, I never suspected--that I was
actually engaged to become the wife of both Harry and Will, who was at
this same time the wife of Lord Chudleigh. And both men were on their
way to Epsom to claim the promise.