“I suppose people must lie on their beds as they make 'em,” says she, with a little sigh. “Dare say Miss Theo is very good, and you'll marry her and go to Virginia, and be as dull as we are here. We were talking of Miss Lambert, my lord, and I was wishing my cousin joy. How is old Goody to-day? What a supper she did eat last night, and drink!—drink like a dragoon! No wonder she has got a headache, and keeps her room. Guess it takes her ever so long to dress herself.”
“You, too, may be feeble when you are old, and require rest and wine to warm you!” says Mr. Warrington.
“Hope I shan't be like her when I'm old, anyhow!” says the lady. “Can't see why I am to respect an old woman, because she hobbles on a stick, and has shaky hands, and false teeth!” And the little heathen sank back on her couch, and showed twenty-four pearls of her own.
“Law!” she adds, after gazing at both her hearers through the curled lashes of her brilliant dark eyes. “How frightened you both look! My lord has already given me ever so many sermons about old Goody. You are both afraid of her: and I ain't, that's all. Don't look so scared at one another! I ain't a-going to bite her head off. We shall have a battle, and I intend to win. How did I serve the Dowager, if you please, and my Lady Fanny, with their high and mighty airs, when they tried to put down the Countess of Castlewood in her own house, and laugh at the poor American girl? We had a fight, and which got the best of it, pray? Me and Goody will have another, and when it is over, you will see that we shall both be perfect friends!”
When at this point of our conversation the door opened, and Madame Beatrix, elaborately dressed according to her wont, actually made her appearance, I, for my part, am not ashamed to own that I felt as great a panic as ever coward experienced. My lord, with his profoundest bows and blandest courtesies, greeted his aunt and led her to the fire, by which my lady (who was already hoping for an heir to Castlewood) lay reclining on her sofa. She did not attempt to rise, but smiled a greeting to her venerable guest. And then, after a brief talk, in which she showed a perfect self-possession, while the two gentlemen blundered and hesitated with the most dastardly tremor, my lord said:
“If we are to look for those pheasants, cousin, we had better go now.”
“And I and aunt will have a cosy afternoon. And you will tell me about Castlewood in the old times, won't you, Baroness?” says the new mistress of the mansion.
O les laches que les hommes! I was so frightened, that I scarce saw anything, but vaguely felt that Lady Castlewood's dark eyes were following me. My lord gripped my arm in the corridor, we quickened our paces till our retreat became a disgraceful run. We did not breathe freely till we were in the open air in the courtyard, where the keepers and the dogs were waiting.
And what happened? I protest, children, I don't know. But this is certain: if your mother had been a woman of the least spirit, or had known how to scold for five minutes during as many consecutive days of her early married life, there would have been no more humble, henpecked wretch in Christendom than your father. When Parson Blake comes to dinner, don't you see how at a glance from his little wife he puts his glass down and says, “No, thank you, Mr. Gumbo,” when old Gum brings him wine? Blake wore a red coat before he took to black, and walked up Breeds Hill with a thousand bullets whistling round his ears, before ever he saw our Bunker Hill in Suffolk. And the fire-eater of the 43rd now dare not face a glass of old port wine! 'Tis his wife has subdued his courage. The women can master us, and did they know their own strength, were invincible.
Well, then, what happened I know not on that disgraceful day of panic when your father fled the field, nor dared to see the heroines engage; but when we returned from our shooting, the battle was over. America had revolted, and conquered the mother country.