“Jack, my boy, when you put to sea with a boat-load of ‘baggage,’ you will find yourself faster than stately dowager-ladened ships.”
My lord’s second cousin, my Lady Marden, a fat, happy woman eternally on the verge of laughter, shook the large green fan that ladies used then in the place of a parasol.
“Dowagers, indeed! I am sure we look younger than our daughters.”
“That is always the case,” said one of my lord’s friends.
“I would venture it that Captain John would rather be in our boat,” and she glanced at Barbara as though for confirmation.
Anne Purcell’s daughter gazed at the far bank over the lady’s shoulder.
“Even a boat-load of aunts and cousins may be duller than a Barbary prison,” quoth my lord, with a play upon words that no one understood.
“And even a weevily biscuit better than none—when you’re empty,” said Sparkin, who seemed to consider himself perfectly justified in airing his wit. But seeing that the venture drew a sharp and ominous glance from the great gentleman in the other boat, Sparkin became suddenly oblivious to its presence, and returned to tickling the brown neck of the man who pulled the bow oar—an act that stamped him as the meanest of opportunists, seeing that the man could not express himself in the presence of “quality.”
The boats were still moving side by side when Mistress Catharine Gore, the deaf duenna, began asking questions in her shrill, aggressive voice.
“Who’s that boy, Stephen?”