“No, no,” said the postillion; “if he had had borough interest, he wouldn’t have been poor nor honourable, though perhaps a right honourable. However, with your grand education and genteel manners, you made all right at last by persuading this noble young gentlewoman to run away from boarding-school with you.”
“I was never at a boarding-school,” said Belle, “unless you call—”
“Ay, ay,” said the postillion, “boarding-school is vulgar, I know: I beg your pardon, I ought to have called it academy, or by some other much finer name—you were in something much greater than a boarding-school.”
“There you are right,” said Belle, lifting up her head and looking the postillion full in the face by the
light of the charcoal fire; “for I was bred in the workhouse.”
“Wooh!” said the postillion.
“It is true that I am of good—”
“Ay, ay,” said the postillion, “let us hear—”
“Of good blood,” continued Belle; “my name is Berners, Isopel Berners, though my parents were unfortunate. Indeed, with respect to blood, I believe I am of better blood than the young man.”
“There you are mistaken,” said I; “by my father’s side I am of Cornish blood, and by my mother’s of brave French Protestant extraction. Now, with respect to the blood of my father—and to be descended well on the father’s side is the principal thing—it is the best blood in the world, for the Cornish blood, as the proverb says—”