Methinks that ever and anon I hear the courteous reader exclaiming, “But, my dear Mrs. Sk—n—st—n, this really has nothing at all to do with the subject of your story.” You are right, courteous reader, no more it has; but the truth is, I feel slightly indisposed this morning; in fact, I may say I have not felt myself for this last day or two—I think it is nothing more than a slight attack of the bile after all, and my fair readers will, I’m sure, agree with me, that when one is bilious, there is nothing does one so much good as to be able to speak one’s mind, without any restraint or the fear of ever being taken to task for it. So, as there is no earthly chance of Mr. Sk—n—st—n’s ever meeting with these few candid remarks, why I’m only too glad to have the opportunity of letting my lady readers know what I really think of my pretty gentleman. However, I will try and rally myself, and coax my wandering thoughts back to my subject, though I’m afraid it will be a difficult task for me to accomplish in my present state of feeling, for I’ve a number of little white stars floating about before my eyes, and my right temple is throbbing and aching as if some imp, out of mere mischief, was thumping away at it with a sledge hammer, and I have a shooting pain just between my shoulders as though some one had got a penknife and was digging it into me every other moment. Our medical adviser says I have gone out and caught that nasty influenza which has been flying about our neighbourhood of late; but don’t tell me! I know it’s nothing of the kind, and only my old friend the bile that’s come back again to worry my very life out, and it’s my firm opinion that our medical adviser knows nothing at all about it.
Well, as I was saying, that beauty of a husband of mine is such a fidget, and must always be meddling with what he knows nothing at all about, that I declare all the time I was nursing he wouldn’t let me taste even a little pickle. And of course in a family you can’t be having a hot joint every day of the week, and I wouldn’t give a pin for my dinner when it’s cold meat, and you can’t touch even so much as a gherkin, or a walnut, or a simple mouthful of red cabbage, to give it a relish. When the rhubarb was coming in, too, really it was quite heart-rending. I declare, he wouldn’t let me eat a spoonful of it, though I had gone to the expense of two shillings, like a silly, to buy as beautiful a bundle as I think I ever set eyes on in all my life, and which positively quite made my mouth water when I saw it at the greengrocer’s, it looked such a picture. And the worst of it all was, I had fixed my mind on it so, (for, to tell the truth, it’s a favourite dish of mine,) that I only eat half a dinner, so as to be able to do justice to the lovely large tart I had made. But Mr. Edward must know such a deal about what was good and what was bad for me, that of course he would have it that I should go making the child ill, even if I took as much of the fruit as would lie upon a sixpence, only just as a taste, though I told him that I had bought it principally in the light of medicine, as I had heard mother say over and over again that it was a fine thing to sweeten the blood at the change of the year. But, oh dear me, no! of course my Mr. Wiseacre knew a great deal better than people who had lived twice as long and seen twice as much of the world as he had, and wouldn’t let me have even a thimble full, just to see if it had turned out as well as I had expected (drat him!) saying, “I ought to be as well aware as he was, that such things were not fit for me while I was nursing.” Ought I, indeed!—though, if it comes to that, what on earth can he know about nursing—a molly-coddle! (Augh! I do detest molly-coddles, and all I can say is, you wont catch me marrying one again in a hurry.)
So as I had got a nurse, and she was coming in shortly, and as my poor little dear pet must be weaned some time or other, I thought it would be better to get that troublesome job over before the new maid entered my service. For I do think it is a perfect cruelty to break a poor thing’s rest every night, for a week at least, with the care of a dear little infant, that of course she doesn’t care a fig about. Besides, I didn’t like to entrust the arduous duty of weaning to a stranger, and my own ever dear mother had made me promise that I would let her have the pleasure of weaning my little chicken. So I thought it would be better, under the circumstances, to make friends with her again, and just get her to take charge of my beautiful little ducks-o’-diamonds for a week or so, especially, too, as Easter Sunday was just coming round; and since I have always made it a religious duty to have a nice little quarter of lamb and a delicious gooseberry pudding with the wood in it, on that day, I felt convinced I should never forgive myself if I wasn’t able to touch a mouthful of the pudding, through Mr. Edward’s taking a mean advantage of my nursing, as I well knew he would only be too glad to do. Besides, to tell the truth, if there’s one thing that I’m more partial to than another, it is to gooseberries with the wood in them, for I do think that, with an egg beaten up in them, just to take the roughness off, you have such an exquisite flavour of the tree in the fruit, that really I should like any lady reader of mine who may be unacquainted with that delicacy of the season, just to try it, (though I can hardly bring myself to believe, that out of the thirty-nine thousand readers I have every month, there can be one among the number who has been wicked heathen enough to have allowed every Easter Sunday of her life to have gone by, without having so much as once partaken of a gooseberry pudding with the wood in it—if so, I blush for her.) Oh! with plenty of sugar, it is delicious; indeed, I may say, heavenly.
While upon this topic, I think it is but right to add, that I have always, ever since I was a child, made it a solemn duty to observe, with the greatest strictness, all the feasts which have been ordained by our venerable mother church. Thank goodness, I can lay my head on my pillow at night and safely say, that I have never allowed a single year to pass over my head without partaking with great devotion and extreme relish of the plum-pudding and mince-pie of Christmas, the pancake of Shrove Tuesday (by the bye, with a spoonful of gin, it eats just like ratafia, I can assure you) and the divine gooseberry tart of Easter Sunday; though, with all my enthusiasm, I regret to state, I can’t say as much for that filthy salt cod of Ash Wednesday. I cannot let the subject drop here, without adding, that it has cut me to the heart to see a nasty barbarous innovating spirit growing up among us of late, which threatens to destroy all the sacred institutions of our country, and to roll the plum-pudding of our forefathers in the dust. Nor can I, before quitting the theme, help giving this solemn warning to the wives and mothers of England, “Hold fast to your pancakes, or they will be snatched from you before many Shrove Tuesdays are over your heads, as sure as my name is Sk—n—st—n.” If the ruthless despoilers must pull down something, why let them tear our salt fish from us; but in the name of all that is great and good, let them spare us the agony of seeing the gooseberry pudding of our best affections trampled under foot.
However, I must leave my gooseberry pudding for awhile, and return to that sentimental novel-reading creature of a Betsy, of whom I spoke in my last chapter. There was a nice bit of goods for a well regulated establishment like mine! How people can ever bring their minds to give characters to such idle, good-for-nothing affected toads, is a mystery to me, and from the character I had with her, I’m sure I expected that she would have proved nothing less than the treasure I had been on the constant look out for ever since I was married. Lord-a’-mercy upon the woman, I don’t suppose there ever was (or ever will be again, let us hope) another creature like her. I declare, unless you kept her right under your nose all day long, there was no getting her to do a single thing properly; for positively she was so wrapt up in her romances, that directly my eye was off her, she was sure to pull the “Heads of the Headless” out of her pocket, or else spread out “Marianne the Child of Charity,” right before her on the kitchen dresser, and no matter what she was at, there she would go rubbing and reading and snivelling away, paying a great deal more attention to her trumpery pennyworth of “soul-stirring interest,” than to my work. I’m sure that to have made her perfectly happy, all she wanted was to have been allowed to scrub down the stairs, with a reading-desk set up before her, or else to stick some highly exciting nautico-domestic rubbish at the top of her broom, and read while she swept—in the same way as the military bands stick their music on their hautboys and things, so that they may play while they march.
For, upon my word, often and often have I, after ringing two or three times for the sentimental cat, gone down in the kitchen, and found her with a snuff to the candle as big as a toad-stool, and all of a tremble like an Italian greyhound, over the “Castle Fiend, or the Fate of the Loved and the Lost, and the Ten Mysteries,” or some other powerfully-written nonsense; and if in my vexation I snatched it from her hand, I was sure to find that, instead of minding the needle-work I had given her, she had been wasting the whole of her evening with such stuff as this:
“Hush! some one comes,” said the Baron Mavaracordo to Canoni—a man of strange aspect and apparel—as they were seated in a richly decorated room in Strademoor Castle.
“My lord,” said a man-at-arms, “there come three travellers through the storm, and demand admittance to the castle.”
“Do they proclaim their calling and degree?”
“They do not; but in the name of hospitality as wanderers, they demand admittance. One is a female, but they are well mounted; and one looks warlike, although clad not in the garments of a knight.” (Clad not! Pretty talk that for a common soldier—of the dark ages, too.)