“Could I not walk, Grandmamma? It is very near.”
“Walk!” cried Grandmamma, and looked at me much as if I had asked if I might not lie or steal. “My dear, you must not bring country ways to Town like that. Walk, indeed!—and you a Courtenay of Powderham! Why, people would take you for a mantua-maker.”
“But, Grandmamma, please,—if I am a Courtenay, does it signify what people take me for?”
“I should like to know, Caroline,” said Grandmamma, with severity, “where you picked up such levelling ideas? Why, they are Whiggery, and worse. I cannot bear these dreadful mob notions that creep about now o’ days. We shall soon be told that a king may as well sell his crown and sceptre, because he would be a king without them.”
“He would not, Madam?” I am afraid I spoke mischievously.
“My dear, of course he would. Once a king, always a king. But the common people need to have symbols before their eyes. They cannot take in any but common notions of what they see. A monarch without a crown, or a judge without robes, or a bishop without lawn sleeves, would never do for them. Why, they would begin to think they were just men like themselves! They do think so, a great deal too much.”
And Grandmamma took two pinches in rapid succession, which proceeding with her always betrays uneasiness of mind.
“Dear, dear!” she muttered, as she snapped her box again, and dropped it into her pocket. “It must be that lamentable mixture in your blood. Whatever a Courtenay could be thinking of, to marry a Dissenter,—a Puritan minister’s daughter, too,—he must have been mad! Yet she was of good blood on the mother’s side.”
I believe Grandmamma knows the pedigree of every creature in this mortal world, up to the seventh generation.
“Was that Deborah Hunter, Grandmamma?”