"But do you forgive me, Mr Simple? It's not that I have forgiven myself."
"I do forgive you with all my heart, my good woman. You have been punished enough."
"I have, indeed," replied she, sobbing; "but don't I deserve it all, and more too? God's blessing, and all the saints' too, upon your head, for your kind forgiveness, anyhow. My heart is lighter." And she quitted the room.
She had scarcely quitted the hotel, when the waiter came up again. "Another lady, my lord, wishes to speak with you, but she won't give her name."
"Really, my lord, you seem to have an extensive female acquaintance," said the general.
"At all events, I am not aware of any that I need be ashamed of. Show the lady up, waiter."
In a moment entered a fat, unwieldly little mortal, very warm from walking; she sat down in a chair, threw back her tippet, and then exclaimed, "Lord bless you, how you have grown! Gemini, if I can hardly believe my eyes; and I declare he don't know me."
"I really cannot exactly recollect where I had the pleasure of seeing you before, madam."
"Well, that's what I said to Jemima, when I went down in the kitchen.
'Jemima,' says I, 'I wonder if little Peter Simple will know me.' And
Jemima says, 'I think he would the parrot, marm.'"
"Mrs Handycock, I believe," said I, recollecting Jemima and the parrot, although, from a little thin woman, she had grown so fat as not to be recognisable.