“Trive on a step, and I will get out and see apout me,” said Betty: “I know the look of the house, as well as I know any thing.”
Betty got out of the coach, and walked up and down the street, looking at the houses like one bewildered.
“Bad luck to you! for a Welsh woman as you are,” exclaimed the coachman, jumping down from the box, “will I lave the young lady standing in the streets all day alone for you to be making a fool this way of us both?—Sorrow take me now! If I do—”
“Pless us, pe not in a pet or a pucker, or how shall I recollect any body or any thing.—Cood! Cood!—Stand you there while I just say over my alphabet: a, p, c, t, e, f, g, h, i, k, l, m, n, o, b.—It was some name which begins with p, and ends with a t, I pelieve.”
“Here’s a pretty direction, upon my troth; some name which begins with a p, and ends with a t,” cried the coachman; and after he had uttered half a score of Hibernian execrations upon the Welsh woman’s folly, he with much good nature went along with her to read the names on the street doors.—“Here’s a name now that’s the very thing for you—here’s Pushit now.—Was the name Pushit?—Ricollict yourself, my good girl, was that your name?”
“Pushit!—Oh, yes, I am sure, and pelieve it was Pushit—Mrs. Pushit’s house, Pristol, where our Miss Hodges lodges alway.”
“Mrs. Pushit—but this is quite another man; I tell you this is Sir John—Faith now we are in luck,” continued the coachman—“here’s another p just at hand; here’s Mrs. Puffit; sure she begins with a p, and ends with a t, and is a milliner into the bargain? so sure enough I’ll engage the young lady lodges here.—Puffit—Hey?—Ricollict now, and don’t be looking as if you’d just been pulled out of your sleep, and had never been in a Christian town before now.”
“Pless us, Cot pless us!” said the Welsh girl, who was quite overpowered by the Irishman’s flow of words—and she was on the point of having recourse, in her own defence, to her native tongue, in which she could have matched either male or female in fluency; but, to Angelina’s great relief, the dialogue between the coachman and Betty Williams ceased. The coachman drew up to Mrs. Puffit’s; but, as there was a handsome carriage at the door, Miss Warwick was obliged to wait in her hackney-coach some time longer. The handsome carriage belonged to Lady Frances Somerset.—By one of those extraordinary coincidences which sometimes occur in real life, but which are scarcely believed to be natural when they are related in books, Miss Warwick happened to come to this shop at the very moment when the persons she most wished to avoid were there. Whilst the dialogue between Betty Williams and the hackney-coachman was passing, Lady Diana Chillingworth and Miss Burrage were seated in Mrs. Puffit’s shop: Lady Diana was extremely busy bargaining with the milliner; for, though rich, and a woman of quality, her ladyship piqued herself upon making the cheapest bargains in the world.
“Your la’ship did not look at this eight and twenty shilling lace,” said Mrs. Puffit; “‘tis positively the cheapest thing your la’ship ever saw. Jessie! the laces in the little blue band-box. Quick! for my Ladi Di.—Quick!”
“But it is out of my power to stay to look at any thing more now,” said Lady Diana; “and yet,” whispered she to Miss Burrage, “when one does go out a shopping, one certainly likes to bring home a bargain.”