“You do?” said I.
“I knew it long ago,” she answered. “It is no new thing.”
We went back to Bloomsbury Square, where I found in the drawing-room a whole parcel of visitors—Mrs Newton and her daughters, and a lot of the Pages (there are twelve of them), Sir Anthony Parmenter, and a young gentleman and gentlewoman who were strangers to me. Grandmamma called me up at once.
“Here, child,” said she, “come and speak to your cousins. These are my brother’s grandchildren—your second cousins, my dear.” And she introduced them—Mr Roland and Miss Hilary Carlingford.
What contrasts there are in this world, to be sure! As my Cousin Hilary sat by me, and asked me if I went often to the play, and if I had seen Mrs Bellamy, (A noted actress of that day) and whether I loved music, and all those endless questions that people seem as if they must ask you when they first make acquaintance with you,—all at once there came up before me the white, calm face of Annas Keith, and the inner vision of Colonel Keith in his prison, waiting so patiently and heroically for death. And oh, how small did the one seem, and how grand the other! Could there be a doubt which was nearer God?
A lump came up in my throat, which I had to swallow before I could tell Hilary that I loved old ballads and such things better than what they call classical music, much of which seems to me like running up and down without any aim or tune to it—and she was giving me a tap with her fan, and saying,—
“Oh, fie, Cousin Caroline! Don’t tell the world your taste is so bad as that!”
Suddenly a sound broke across it all, that sent everything vanishing away, present and future, good and ill, and carried me off to the old winter parlour at Brocklebank.
“Bless me, man! don’t you know how to carry a basket?” said a voice, which I felt as ready and as glad to welcome as if it had been that of an angel. “Well, you Londoners have not much pith. We Cumberland folks don’t carry our baskets with the tips of our fingers—can’t, very often; they are a good heft.”
“Madam,” said Dobson at the door, looking more uncomfortable than I had ever seen him, “here is a—a person—who—”