*****
It turned out that our entertainer, and his wife and daughter, were bound on a visit this forenoon to some neighbour; so, as our roads lay together so far, we all started after breakfast in company. I was a good deal amused at the change in the outward woman of my ladies maid, the handsome brown girl in the gay gown already mentioned, who now appeared stripped of her plumes, without stockings or shoes, in her Osnaburg chemise, and coarse blue woollen petticoat—the latter garment shortened, like the tunic of her namesake Diana, by a handkerchief tied tightly round her waist, just over the hips, exhibiting the turn of her lower spars to considerably above the knee—with a large bandbox on her head covered with oilskin, and a good cudgel in her hand. I asked Mr Cornstick how far they were going. He answered it was a ride of fifteen miles, and, in the same breath, he called out to the brown damsel, "Say we shall be there by second breakfast time, Diana."
"Yes, massa."
"Mind we don't get there before you."
"No fear of dat, massa," said the silvan goddess, smiling, as she struck off through the woods at a pace that would have pleased Captain Barclay exceedingly. It appeared that she was to take a short cut across the hills.
"How can that girl trust her naked limbs in such a brake?" said I.
"Why not, don't you see she is a chased goddess?" said Don Felix.
"Now, Flamingo, I verily believe you will peck at a grain of mustard-seed next," quoth friend Twig.
We started; Mrs Cornstick on a stout pony, with the head servant, Mark Antony, by name, but as ugly a flat-nosed nigger as Christian could desire to clap eyes on by nature, holding on by its tail. Then came Miss Cornstick on her palfrey, with a similar pendant, but her page was a fine handsome mulatto boy; while we brought up the rear—the whole cavalcade being closed by the mounted servants. By and by, the road being good, although mountainous, we spanked along at a smart rate, and it was then that the two fellows pinned to the ladies' tails—the tails of their ponies, I beg pardon—showed their paces in a most absurd fashion, making great flying strides at every step, so as to keep time with the canter of the quadrupeds. They looked like two dancing-masters gone mad. I thought of Cutty Sark clutching the tail of Tam O'Shanter's grey mare Meg.
"Do you see that humming-bird?" said Jacob Twig, who was giving me a cast in his curricle—Flamingo having changed into my uncle's gig. Crack—he knocked it down on the wing with his whip, as it hovered over some flowers on the roadside. "That's what I call a good shot now."