“Put hur has a great deal of money in hur trunk, I pelieve, at Llanwaetur,” said Betty.
“Surely Miss Hodges does not know I am here,” cried Miss Warwick—“her Angelina!”
“Ma’am, she’ll be down immediately, I do suppose,” said Mrs. Bertrand. “What was it you pleased called for—angelica, ma’am, did you say? At present we are quite out, I’m ashamed to say, of angelica, ma’am—Well, child,” continued Mrs. Bertrand to her maid, who was at this moment seen passing by the back door of the shop in great haste.
“Ma’am—anan,” said the maid, turning back her cap from off her ear.
“Anan! deaf doll! didn’t you hear me tell you to tell Miss Hodges a lady wanted to speak to her in a great hurry?”
“No, mam,” replied the girl, who spoke in the broad Somersetshire dialect: “I heard you zay, up to Miss Hodges; zoo I thought it was the bottle o’brandy, and zoo I took alung with the tea-kettle—but I’ll go up again now, and zay miss bes in a hurry, az she zays.”
“Brandy!” repeated Miss Warwick, on whom the word seemed to make a great impression.
“Pranty, ay, pranty,” repeated Betty Williams—“our Miss Hodges always takes pranty in her teas at Llanwaetur.”
“Brandy!—then she can’t be my Araminta.”
“Oh, the very same, and no other; you are quite right, ma’am,” said Mrs. Bertrand, “if you mean the same that is publishing the novel, ma’am,—‘The Sorrows of Araminta’—for the reason I know so much about it is, that I take in the subscriptions, and distributed the purposals.”