Miss Livingstone, who scrutinised Lewis as if she suspected him of belonging to that ingenious fraternity yclept the swell mob, was, in appearance, a very awful old lady indeed. The nearest approach we can make to a description of her features is to say that they bore a marked (with the small-pox) resemblance to those of Minerva and her owl; the sternness of that utilitarian goddess—the Miss Martineau of Olympus—and the sapient stupidity of the so-called bird of wisdom, finding their exact counterpart in Miss Livingstone’s time-honoured physiognomy. This lady was appareled after a strange and imposing mode, as behoved a spinster of such orthodox station and ferociously virtuous propriety as the General’s female commander-in-chief. Minerva’s helmet was modernised into a stupendous fabric, wherein starch, muslin, and ribbon of an unnatural harshness struggled upwards in a pyramid, whence pointing with stiffened ends innumerable, suggestive of any amount of porcupines, they appeared ready and anxious to repel or impale society at large. A triangle of spotless lawn supplied the place of the breastplate beneath which Jove’s daughter was accustomed to conceal her want of heart; and a silk gown of an uncomfortable shade of grey, made so scanty as to render at first sight the hypothesis of a mermaidic termination conceivable, completed the costume of this immaculate old lady.
Having apparently satisfied herself that Lewis had no immediate design upon the spoons and forks, she condescended to afford him the meteorological information that although the sunshine might delude the unwary into believing it to be a fine day, she had received private information that the weather was not to be relied upon: after promulgating which opinion she placed herself at the head, and assumed the direction of, the luncheon-table.
Charley Leicester appeared to be the only individual of the party insensible to a certain freezing influence, which might be specified as one of Miss Livingstone’s most characteristic attributes. Having exerted himself to supply that lady with every possible adjunct she could require, and seduced her into an amount of Cayenne pepper which afterwards subjected her to considerable physical suffering, he began—
“I was present, a day or two ago, Miss Livingstone, when a question was started as to what man of modern times had been the greatest benefactor to his race. It opened a mine of very curious speculation, I can assure you.”
“I do not doubt it, Charles,” returned Miss Livingstone; “and I am glad to learn that the young men of the present day employ their time in such profitable discussions. What decision did you arrive at?”
“Well, ma’am,” resumed Leicester gravely, “there was of course much difference of opinion. James Watt had rather a strong party in his favour, but an ex-railway director was present who had lost £10,000 on the Do-em-and-Foot-in-it Line, and he blackballed him. Lord John was proposed; but some of the men who took in Punch laughed so immoderately when his name was mentioned that it was immediately withdrawn. One youth, who is known to be a little bit flighty, not quite accountable, poor fellow! declared for Lord Brougham, but we soothed him, and he had sense enough left to see his error almost immediately. At length it came to my turn——”
“And whom did you mention?” inquired Miss Livingstone, with a degree of interest most unusual in her.
“I had been pondering the matter deeply,” continued Leicester, “to try and hit on some worthy against whom no valid objection could be raised. At one moment I thought of Moses——”
“I fancied it was restricted to men of modern times,” interposed Miss Livingstone.
“He to whom I referred, ma’am,” returned Leicester, “was not the Israelitish lawgiver, but the man of the City Mart, that benevolent individual who clothes poverty in ‘a light paletot at ten-and-six,’ and enables the honest hearts of free-born Britons to palpitate beneath a ‘gent’s superior vest’ for the trifling remuneration of five shillings.” This speech was algebra, or thereabouts, to the lady to whom it was addressed, but she had a sort of instinctive apprehension that Leicester was talking nonsense, and accordingly drew herself up stiffly, completing her resemblance to Minerva by composing her features into a very satisfactory likeness of the Gorgon. No way affected by this transformation, Leicester continued—