"Only a little drop—just necessary to make it keep," said Miss Barker. "You know we put brandy paper over preserves to make them keep. I often feel tipsy myself from eating damson tart."
I question whether damson tart would have opened Mrs. Jamieson's heart as the cherry brandy did; but she told us of a coming event, respecting which she had been quite silent till that moment.
"My sister-in-law, Lady Glenmire, is coming to stay with me." There was a chorus of "Indeed!" and then a pause. Each one rapidly reviewed her wardrobe, as to its fitness to appear in the presence of a baron's widow; for of course a series of small festivals were always held in Cranford on the arrival of a visitor at any of our friends' houses. We felt very pleasantly excited on the present occasion.
Not long after this, the maids and the lanterns were announced. Mrs. Jamieson had the sedan-chair, which squeezed itself into Miss Barker's narrow lobby with some difficulty, and most literally "stopped the way." It required some skillful manœuvring on the part of the old chairmen (shoemakers by day, but when summoned to carry the sedan, dressed up in a strange old livery—long greatcoats with small capes, coeval with the sedan and similar to the dress of the class in Hogarth's pictures) to edge, and back, and try at it again, and finally to succeed in carrying their burden out of Miss Barker's front door. Then we heard their pit-a-pat along the quiet little street, as we put on our calashes and pinned up our gowns; Miss Barker hovering about us with offers of help, which if she had not remembered her former occupation, and wished us to forget it, would have been much more pressing.
THÉOPHILE GAUTIER
(1811-1872)
BY ROBERT SANDERSON
