When Miss Galindo went, she left so favourable an impression of her visit on my lady, that she said to me with a pleased smile:
“I think I have provided Mr. Horner with a far better clerk than he would have made of that lad Gregson in twenty years. And I will send the lad to my lord’s grieve, in Scotland, that he may be kept out of harm’s way.”
But something happened to the lad before this purpose could be accomplished.
CHAPTER X.
The next morning, Miss Galindo made her appearance, and, by some mistake, unusual in my lady’s well-trained servants, was shown into the room where I was trying to walk; for a certain amount of exercise was prescribed for me, painful although the exertion had become.
She brought a little basket along with her; and while the footman was gone to inquire my lady’s wishes (for I don’t think that Lady Ludlow expected Miss Galindo so soon to assume her clerkship; nor, indeed, had Mr. Horner any work of any kind ready for his new assistant to do), she launched out into conversation with me.
“It was a sudden summons, my dear! However, as I have often said to myself, ever since an occasion long ago, if Lady Ludlow ever honours me by asking for my right hand, I’ll cut it off, and wrap the stump up so tidily she shall never find out it bleeds. But, if I had had a little more time, I could have mended my pens better. You see, I have had to sit up pretty late to get these sleeves made”—and she took out of her basket a pair of brown-holland over-sleeves, very much such as a grocer’s apprentice wears—“and I had only time to make seven or eight pens, out of some quills Farmer Thomson gave me last autumn. As for ink, I’m thankful to say, that’s always ready; an ounce of steel filings, an ounce of nut-gall, and a pint of water (tea, if you’re extravagant, which, thank Heaven! I’m not), put all in a bottle, and hang it up behind the house door, so that the whole gets a good shaking every time you slam it to—and even if you are in a passion and bang it, as Sally and I often do, it is all the better for it—and there’s my ink ready for use; ready to write my lady’s will with, if need be.”
“O, Miss Galindo!” said I, “don’t talk so; my lady’s will! and she not dead yet.”
“And if she were, what would be the use of talking of making her will! Now, if you were Sally, I should say, ‘Answer me that, you goose!’ But, as you’re a relation of my lady’s, I must be civil, and only say, ‘I can’t think how you can talk so like a fool!’ To be sure, poor thing, you’re lame!”
I do not know how long she would have gone on; but my lady came in, and I, released from my duty of entertaining Miss Galindo, made my limping way into the next room. To tell the truth, I was rather afraid of Miss Galindo’s tongue, for I never knew what she would say next.