“I wish you would look sprightlier about it then, Nancy,” recommended Lady Sundon, “for who would come to the house, I should like to know, if they were treated to nothing but dismals—from Sir Peter’s pains to your and Lyddy’s quarrels with the weather for taking your hair out of the curl—and not a shade of relief from a joke or laugh to shake one’s sides and warm one’s blood like a sip of cherry brandy?” When the party set out, Lady Bell took care to qualify her support of the expedition by turning over Captain Fane to walk with one of his cousins, while she walked with the other. “I am not going to make the man too proud,” reflected Lady Bell, with a quiet consciousness that she had it in her power to make a man hold up his head among his fellows; “he is saucy enough without that.” The winter weather was passably dry, so that the fact of Oxford Street’s not being paved did not materially interfere with the ladies’ comfort. They saw a man in the act of being whipped round Covent Garden, but he was not in their way. His worship the Mayor’s coach passed them, but they were not aware of the circumstance that he had been robbed that very morning, in sight of his retinue, at Turnham Green, by a single highwayman, who swore that he would shoot whoever resisted. Though the knowledge had travelled fast, it would not have inflicted qualms even on the Misses Sundon, for they were not going out of town. The walking-party were not so fortunate as to encounter the wild Indians, who loomed so largely in Lady Sundon’s imagination as one of the sights of London this year; but they got a glimpse of Omiah, the native of Otaheite brought home by Captain Cook. The drawback was that the interesting savage was not at the moment in South Sea costume, which, perhaps, was not exactly suited to a January day in London—on the contrary, he formed a dingy representative of an Englishman in a frock and pantaloons. In the rooms where were the last clean-cut coinage, the casts of figures in metal, the ingenious clocks, and the skeleton models of larger machines, which were to turn the world upside down, Lady Bell did her best to be interested and edified. But after all she found her greatest fascination in Captain Fane’s intelligent satisfaction, which stimulated and warmed the whole man, so that his incredulity gave way to credulity, and in place of sardonic fault-finding, he grew, as it sounded, quite extravagant in his praise, and became boyish in his animation. “These are the marvels of creative mind, Lady Bell. They are signs of battles won over the opposing elements. I’d liefer fight with air and water for my fellow-creatures than fight my fellow-creatures themselves. I’d sooner have been Mr. Boulton, of Birmingham, or the grey stooping Scotchman his partner, Mr. Watt, who has come up to town about a patent, and is standing yonder explaining his pistons and valves to a country mechanic, than I would have been Admiral Rodney or poor Lord Clive.”