IT was on a cold, damp, raw December morning, before the emancipating civilisation of railways, that our hero’s father, then returning from a trading tour, after stamping up and down the damp flags before the Lion and Unicorn hotel and posting-house at Slopperton, waiting for the old True Blue Independent coach “comin’ hup,” for whose cramped inside he had booked a preference seat, at length found himself bundled into the straw-bottomed vehicle, to a very different companion to what he was accustomed to meet in those deplorable conveyances. Instead of a fusty old farmer, or a crumby basket-encumbered market-woman, he found himself opposite a smiling, radiant young lady, whose elegant dress and ring-bedizened hand proclaimed, as indeed was then generally the case with ladies, that she was travelling in a coach “for the first time in her life.”
This was our fair friend, Miss Willing.
The Earl and Countess Delacey had just received an invitation to spend the Christmas at Tiara Castle, where the countess on the previous year had received if not a defeat, at all events had not achieved a triumph, in the dressing way, over the Countess of Honiton, whose maid, Miss Criblace, though now bribed to secrecy with a full set of very little the worse for wear Chinchilla fur, had kept the fur and told the secret to Miss Willing, that their ladyships were to meet again. Miss Willing was now on her way to town, to arrange with the Countess’s milliner for an annihilating series of morning and evening dresses wherewith to extinguish Lady Honiton, it being utterly impossible, as our fair friends will avouch, for any lady to appear twice in the same attire. How thankful men ought to be that the same rule does not prevail with them!
Miss Willing was extremely well got up; for being of nearly the same size as the countess, her ladyship’s slightly-worn things passed on to her with scarcely a perceptible diminution of freshness, it being remarkable how, in even third and fourth-rate establishments, dresses that were not fit for the “missus” to be seen in come out quite new and smart on the maid.
On this occasion Miss Willing ran entirely to the dark colours, just such as a lady travelling in her own carriage might be expected to wear. A black terry velvet bonnet with a single ostrich feather, a dark brown Levantine silk dress, with rich sable cuffs, muff, and boa, and a pair of well-fitting primrose-coloured kid gloves, which if they ever had been on before had not suffered by the act.
Billy—old Billy that is to say—was quite struck in a heap at such an unwonted apparition, and after the then usual salutations, and inquiries how she would like to have the window, he popped the old question, “How far was she going?” with very different feelings to what it was generally asked, when the traveller wished to calculate how soon he might hope to get rid of his vis-à-vis and lay up his legs on the seat.
“To town,” replied the lady, dimpling her pretty cheeks with a smile. “And you?” asked she, thinking to have as good as she gave.
“Ditto,” replied the delighted Billy, divesting himself of a great coarse blue and white worsted comforter, and pulling up his somewhat dejected gills, abandoning the idea of economising his Lincoln and Bennett by the substitution of an old Gregory’s mixture coloured fur cap, with its great ears tied over the top, in which he had snoozed and snored through many a long journey.
Miss Willing then drew from her richly-buckled belt a beautiful Geneva watch set round with pearls, (her ladyship’s, which she was taking to town to have repaired), and Billy followed suit with his substantial gold-repeater, with which he struck the hour. Miss then ungloved the other hand, and passed it down her glossy brown hair, all smooth and regular, for she had just been scrutinising it in a pocket-mirror she had in her gold-embroidered reticule.
Billy’s commercial soul was in ecstacies, and he was fairly over head and ears in love before they came to the first change of horses. He had never seen sich a sample of a hand before, no, nor sich a face; and he felt quite relieved when among the multiplicity of rings he failed to discover that thin plain gold one that intimates so much.