Chapter Ten.
Spiders’ Webs.
“Why does he find so many tangled threads,
So many dislocated purposes,
So many failures in the race of life?”
Rev. Horatius Bonar, D.D.
We had a grand time of it last night, to celebrate the Prince’s entry into Derby. I did not see one red ribbon. Grandmamma is very much put out at the forbidding of French cambrics; she says nobody will be able to have a decent ruffle or a respectable handkerchief now: but what can you expect of these Hanoverians? And I am sure she looked smart enough last night. We had dancing—first, the minuet, and then a round—“Pepper’s black,” and then “Dull Sir John,” and a country dance, “Smiling Polly.” Flora would not dance, and Grandmamma excused her, because she was a minister’s daughter: Grandmamma always says a clergyman when she tells people: she says minister is a low word only used by Dissenters, and she does not want people to know that any guest of hers has any connection with those creatures. “However, thank Heaven! (says she) the girl is not my grand-daughter!” I don’t know what she would say if I were to turn Dissenter. I suppose she would cut me off with a shilling. Ephraim said so, and I asked him what it meant. Shillings are not very sharp, and what was I to be cut off? Ephraim seemed excessively amused.
“You are too good, Cary,” said he. “Did you think the shilling was a knife to cut you off something? It means she will only leave you a shilling in her will.”
“Well, that will be a shilling more than I expect,” said I: and Ephraim went off laughing.
I asked Miss Newton, as she seemed to know him, who Mr Raymond was. She says he is the lecturer at Saint Helen’s, and might have been a decent man if that horrid creature Mr Wesley had not got hold of him.
“Oh, do you know anything about Mr Wesley, or Mr Whitefield?” cried I. “Are they in London now?”
If I could hear them again!