Sir Marmaduke did not appear to advantage in the attitude he had chosen. His wig was off, and hung stately on its own account over a high-backed chair. His round smooth head was discoloured in patches like the shield of a tortoise, his heavy features looked the heavier that they were somewhat swollen after eating, the lower jaw had dropped comfortably to its rest, and his whole frame was sunk in an attitude of complete and ungainly repose.
A half-smoked pipe had dropped from his relaxed fingers to the floor, and a remnant of brown ale stood at his elbow in a plain silver tankard on the table.
The apartment was their usual family parlour, as it was then called, and therefore plainly, not to say meanly, furnished. Sir Marmaduke being a gentleman of ancient blood and considerable possessions, owned flocks and herds in plenty, fertile corn land under the plough, miles of pasturage over the hill. He kept good horses in his stable, fleet greyhounds in his kennel, and a cast of hawks in his mews, only surpassed by those of Sir George Hamilton; but he could not afford, he said, to waste his substance on “Frenchified luxuries,” and this opprobrious term seemed to comprise all such vanities as carpets, curtains, couches, pictures, and ornaments of every description. For indoors, he argued, why, he didn’t frequent that side of the house much himself, and what had been good enough for his mother must be good enough for his wife and the girls. When hard pressed, as be sure he was by these on the score of certain damask hanging and gorgeous carpets at Hamilton Hill, he would reply that Lady Hamilton was the sweetest woman in Europe, whereat his audience dissented, but that extravagance was her crying fault, only excusable on the ground of her foreign birth and education, and it couldn’t go on. It could not go on! He should live to see his neighbour ruined, and sold up, but he should be sorry for it, prodigiously sorry! for Hamilton was a good fellow, very strong in the saddle, and took his bottle like a man!
He had spoken to the same effect just before he dropped asleep, and Dame Umpleby with her daughters had continued the subject in whispers till it died out of itself just as the far-off figure of Alice, coming direct to the house, afforded fresh food for conversation.
Margery being the youngest, saw the arrival some half-second before her sisters, and for one rapturous moment believed her dearest visions were realised, and little Red Riding Hood was coming to pay them a visit in person; but this young woman being about five years of age, and of imaginative temperament, was already accustomed to disillusions, and felt, therefore, more disgusted than surprised when her eldest sister Janet suggested the less startling supposition that it was Goody Round’s grand-daughter on an errand for red salve and flannel, offering, at the same time, to procure those palliatives in person from the store-room. Janet, like most elder girls in a large family, was as steady as a matron, taking charge of the rest with the care of an aunt, and the authority of a governess. But the mother’s sight was sharper than her children’s. “Bessie Round’s not half the height of that girl,” said she, rising for a better look. “See how she skims across the stepping-stones at the ford! She’s in a hurry, whoever she is! But that is no reason, Margery, why you shouldn’t learn your spelling, nor that I should have to unpick the last half-dozen stitches in Marian’s sampler. Hush! my dears, I pray you! Less noise, or you will wake father.”
Pending this discussion, Alice, whose pace was at least twice as good as Bessie Round’s, had reached the house. She looked very pretty, all flushed and tumbled out of the moorland breezes, and Dame Umpleby’s heart reproached her for the hundredth time that she had allowed her husband to establish as a rule the administration of justice in his own room, unhampered by her presence. He had once in their early married life admitted her assistance to his judicial labours, but such confusion resulted from this indulgence that the experiment was never repeated.
Though Sir Marmaduke had been married a score of years, and was the model of a steady-going, middle-aged gentleman, such is the self-tormenting tendency of the female mind that his wife could not mark without certain painful twinges, the good looks of this visitor waiting at the hall-door, lest her errand should prove as usual—“A young woman, if you please, wants to see Sir Marmaduke on justice business!”
Such twinges are generally prophetic. Long before Margery and Marian had settled a disputed point as to the identity of the wolf and little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother in the story-book, a plethoric serving-man, who had obviously been employing his leisure in the kitchen, like his master in the parlour, entered with a red shining face, and announced Alice’s arrival in the very words his mistress knew so well.
Sir Marmaduke woke up with a start, rubbed his eyes, his nose, the whole of his bald head, and replied as usual—