“Shouldn’t know her from Adam’s grandmother,” said the post-boy who had ridden the wheel-horses. “Howsomedever, I yeerd her sob and moan like a wheel as vants grease.”
“You may say that,” said the other post-boy, a little shrivelled old man, a good deal past sixty; “we lads see strange soights. I couldn’t a-bear to see her siffer in that ’ere manner—I did feel for her almost as much as if she’d been an ’oss.”
The landlord gave the two charioteers force de complimens for the tenderness of their feelings, the intensity of which he fully comprehended, as he changed for each his guinea, the bounty of the lady. When he found them in proper cue, that is to say, in the middle of their second glass of brandy-and-water, he proceeded in his cross-examination, and he learned from them that they had been engaged to wait at a certain spot, on an extensive heath some twelve miles distant; that they had hardly waited there an hour when a private carriage, containing the lady in question and a gentleman, arrived; that the lady, closely veiled, had been transferred from the one conveyance to the other, and that the post-boys had been ordered to drive with the utmost speed to the destination where they now found themselves.
This account seemed to satisfy the scruples of the landlord, which, of course, were by no means pecuniary, but merely moral, when in bounced the fiery-visaged landlady. He was forced to stand the small-shot of his wife. Poor man! he had only powder to reply to it, and that, just now, was woefully damp.
“You lazy, loitering, do-little, much-hindering, prateapace sot! here’s the lady taken alarmingly ill. The physician has been sent for, and his carriage will be at the door before you blow that ill-looking nose of yours, that my blessed ten commandments are itching to score down—you paltry — ah!”
With a very little voice, and a very great submission, mine host squeaked out, “Have you seen the lady’s face?”
“Face! is it face you want? and ladies’ faces too—haven’t I got face enough for you—you apology, you!”
What the good woman said was indubitably true. She had face enough for any two moderately-visaged wives, and enough over and above to have supplied anyone who might have lost a portion of theirs. However, I will be more polite than the landlady, and acquaint the reader, that no one yet of the establishment had seen the lady’s face, nor was it intended that anyone should.
As this squabble was growing into a quarrel the physician arrived; he had not been long alone with the unknown, before he sent for a surgeon, and the surgeon for a nurse. There was so much bustle, alarm, and secrecy, above-stairs, that the landlord began to consider which of the two undertakers, his friends, he should favour with the anticipated job, and rubbed his hands as he dwelt on the idea of a coroner’s inquest, and the attendant dinner. The landlady was nearly raving mad at being excluded from what she supposed was the bed of death. Hot flannels and warm water were now eagerly called for—and these demands were looked upon as a sure sign that dissolution approached.
The stairs approaching the lady’s chamber were lined with master, mistress, man-servant and maid-servants, all eagerly listening to the awful bustle within. At length there is a dead silence of some minutes. The listeners shuddered.