"My dear creature, sure you won't pretend you've forgot me?" cried the little woman, with broad, outspoken speech, after her first mincing salutation had been acknowledged by a stately curtsey and a "Your humble servant, madam."
"Why, 'tis Patty!" exclaimed Antonia, holding out both her hands.
"Yes, 'tis Patty—Mrs. Granger. Sure you remember old General Granger that you used to jeer at. I have been married to him over a year, and we have handsome lodgings in Leicester Square, and I keep my chair; and if he outlives his two elder brothers and three nephews, I shall be a peeress."
"My dear Patty, I am gladder than I can say to see your kind little face again. Sit down, child. You must stop and dine with me. I have some cousins coming to dinner, and some company afterwards."
"Well, I'm glad you're glad. I thought you was too proud to remember me, since you didn't send me a card for your ball t'other night, though all London was there."
"I did not know what had become of you. I have asked ever so many people who knew the theatres, and no one could say where Miss Lester had gone since her name vanished from the playbills."
"The General is a strait-laced old fool!" said Patty. "He doesn't like people to know I was an actress, though I flatter myself that nobody can hear me speak or see me curtsey without discovering it. There's an air of high comedy that nobody can mistake. Sure 'tis in the hope of catching it that fine ladies take up Kitty Clive."
"You mustn't call your husband a fool, Patty, especially if he's kind to you."
"Oh, he's kind enough, but he's very troublesome with his pussy-cats, and Minettes, and nonsense; though, to be sure, Minette is a prettier name than Martha, and genteeler than Patty. And he's very close with his money. I might have my coach as well as my chair if he wasn't a miser. I sometimes think I was a simpleton to leave the stage for a husband of seventy. Sure I might have been another Mrs. Cibber."
"You had been acting seven years, Patty. You gave your genius a fair chance."