"No, I don't think she would, Auntie, but she is not very particular in her own dress."
"She always looks like a thorough lady, my dear: Mrs. Buckley is a woman whom I could set before you as a model for imitation far sooner than myself."
"She is a duck, at all events," said Mary; "and her husband is a darling."
Miss Thornton was too much shocked to say anything. To hear a young lady speak of a handsome military man as a "darling," went quite beyond her experience. She was considering how much bread and water and backboard she would have felt it her duty to give Lady Kate, or Lady Fanny, in old times, for such an expression, when the Vicar, who had been dozing, woke up and said:—
"Bless us, what a night! The equinoctial gales come back again. This rain will make up for the dry March with a vengeance; I am glad I am safely housed before a good fire."
Unlucky words! he drew nearer to the fire, and began rubbing his knees; he had given them about three rubs, when the door opened and the maid's voice was heard ominous of evil.
"Thomas Jewel is worse, sir, and if you please his missis don't expect he'll last the night; and could you just step up?"
"Just stepping up," was a pretty little euphemism for walking three long miles dead in the teeth of a gale of wind, with a fierce rushing tropical rain. One of the numerous tenders of the ship Jewel (74), had just arrived before the wind under bare poles, an attempt to set a rag of umbrella having ended in its being blown out of the bolt-ropes, and the aforesaid tender Jewel was now in the vicarage harbour of refuge, reflecting what an awful job it would have in beating back against the monsoon.
"Who has come with this message?" said the Vicar, entering the kitchen followed by Miss Thornton and Mary.
"Me, sir," says a voice from the doorway.