“Will you have the propitiousness, the kindness to stay and communicate unto me whether Squire Foster is in his residence?” said Mr. Hill.
The girl looked vacant, not knowing what to make of his question.
“What does the gentleman mean?” asked the servant of Mr. Pope.
“He wants to know if Squire Foster is at home.”
“Yes, sir, he is. Will you walk in?”
Mr. Hill and his friend were showed into the parlour, where they waited the coming of the Squire. After a brief interval “the resident proprietor” made his appearance.
“Ah, ah! how do you do, Mr. Hill? I am very glad to see you,” said the Squire, at the same time shaking him by the hand.
“I am in the highest state of excellent health, extremely obliged, Squire. I am sanguine to hope, sir, that you live in the felicity of enjoying, and possessing, and feeling an undistracted state of the physical constitution. Will you, Squire, give me the pleasure and allow me the happiness of introducing and bringing to your acquaintance my friend Mr. Pope? Squire Foster,—Mr. Pope.”
“How did you leave Mrs. Hill and family?” asked the Squire.
“It gives me no ordinary pain, and no usual grief, and no common sorrow, to inform and instruct you that I left Mrs. Hill, my dear wife, my choice companion, subject to, and suffering from, and enduring under, a severe and trying affectation of her respiratory organs, superinduced by an exaggerant cold, received, and taken, and caught by her the other day of last week, when we were travelling, and riding, and going to the village of Burnley. My little ones, my children, my offspring, Squire, I am excussitated to say, are in the finest, the best, the happiest state of their juvenile physique that I have ever known, remembered, and borne in mind.”