[30] The baskets were very pretty: they were ornamented with silk and muslin.
[31] The fruit that we tasted in France (except the melons) was very bad. Their best cherries—cerises anglaises—were so hard one was obliged to chew them, their gooseberries were like blighted ones, and their pears and plums indifferent. (Grapes were not ripe.)
[32] A Cumberland name for 'curds.'—Editor.
[33] She happened to be very plain.
[34] The French are excessively great talkers. If one asks a question in the street, they tell such roundabout stories one can hardly get away. They never say they do not know a thing. We one day went in search of a Mr. Dyas; we enquired of nearly a dozen people the way; they each told us different, and not one right. The people in the house he lived in directed us to a different one.
[35] There were several French ladies with them, who, they said, gave the most fashionable parties in Versailles, and were very agreeable. These ladies were as much like ladies in their appearance as servants.
[36] I think this must be a mistake.—W. B. Indeed it is not.—M. B.
[37] A frotteur is a man that comes to clean the rooms; he fastens a small brush on to each foot and skates about the room till the boards or flags are polished.
[38] An old-fashioned name for camellia.—Editor.
[39] It was a young vineyard; there were plenty of unripe grapes in the old ones, but spoiled by the weather.