'Look you at yourself in the glass, Netta, fach! and you 'ont be vexing any more. I never was seeing such a glass as that before. Look you! you can see yourself from the beauty-flowers in the white bonnet—dear! there is a bonnet! and you was looking so well in it—down to them lovely white shoes on your foots, I never was thinking before you had such little foots.'
This conversation takes place whilst Mrs Jenkins is engaged in dressing Netta for her wedding, and in endeavouring at the same time to soothe various ebullitions of grief that burst out ever and anon, between the different acts of the attiring. The girl cannot quite forget the friends she left behind her, when she so suddenly ran away from home. The appeal to her personal appearance is not, however, in vain. She looks in the cheval-glass which draws forth Mrs Jenkins' admiration, and thinks she has seldom seen anything so pretty as the reflection of her own person in her bridal dress. She hastily dries her eyes, and turns round and round several times to assure herself that all is right.
'Ah! Howel is knowing everything!' says Mrs Jenkins. 'Silks and laces, and flowers, and worked-handkerchiefs, and all as white as a lily! And your cheeks a deal redder than any I do see here along! My deet! but you do be looking genteel.'
'Do I look as if I had been crying, aunt?' asks Netta, wetting her eyes with lavender water. 'I'm afraid of Howel and those grand people. I wish he hadn't asked them.'
'Oh, for sham! Netta. There they are, I shouldn't wonder! Yes indeet! says Mrs Jenkins, 'I hear them talking on the stairs.'
A knock at the bedroom door is followed by the entrance of two ladies, apparently mother and daughter; the former a portly and roseate dame, clad in the richest of brocades and white lace shawls—the latter a thin and somewhat yellow damsel, a tired in white and pink bonnet and mantle to match, evidently in bridesmaid's gear.
'Ah I how charming! how beautiful! what a country-flower in London leaves!' exclaim the ladies, rushing up to Netta and kissing her. 'Good morning, Mrs Jenkins, your son has chosen a bewitching young person indeed!'
'Treue for your ladyship,' says Mrs Jenkins, making her very best curtsey, as the ladies alternately shake hands with her.
'Your ladyship' is no less a person than Lady Simpson, the wife of Sir John Simpson, a gentleman who acquired that title on an occasion when William the Fourth, of blessed memory, was fêted in the city. Sir John, having made a considerable fortune in trade, and being blessed with a helpmate of an aspiring mind, has removed from his old neighbourhood to that of Hyde Park, where he is spending the money he earned on the general advancement of his family. This family consists of a son and daughter, who have been highly educated according to the general acceptation of the term. With the son Howel is very intimate, and through him he has long been known to the rest of the family; but it is only since his vast accession of wealth that he has had the distinguished honour of claiming Sir John and Lady Simpson as his particular friends. To them he confided his intended marriage with a beautiful cousin, who, for family reasons, was coming to London, he said, under his mother's protection, to be united to him. They had called on Mrs Jenkins and Netta the previous day, and were invited to the wedding in the various capacities of father, bridesman, and bridesmaid. Previously to their making his mother's acquaintance, Howel informed them that being Welsh, she naturally spoke the language of her country, and was so patriotic that she disliked any other; and said that they must not be surprised at her peculiar English, which was simply a translation of the Welsh idioms into what, to her, was a foreign tongue. He also gave his mother an hour's lecture upon her dress and deportment; and Netta a few hints as to her general behaviour, which, whilst it enchanted the elder, frightened the younger lady. Thus 'forewarned,' if not 'fore-armed' the forces of Simpson and Jenkins were thrown together.
Lady Simpson is an average specimen of a vulgar woman aping gentility; her daughter of a would-be fine lady.