Tales and Novels — Volume 01: Moral TalesEdgeworth, Maria
General
Tales and Novels — Volume 01: Moral Tales
Edgeworth, Maria
Fiction
Angelina went by water from Cardiffe to Bristol; the water was rather
rough, and, as she was unused to the motion of a vessel, she was both
frightened and sick. She spent some hours very disagreeably, and without
even the sense of acting like a heroine, to support her spirits. It was
late in the evening before she arrived at the end of her voyage: she was
landed on the quay at Bristol. No hackney-coach was to be had, and
she was obliged to walk to the Bush. To find herself in the midst of a
bustling, vulgar crowd, by whom she was unknown, but not unnoticed, was
new to Miss Warwick. Whilst she was with Lady Diana Chillingworth,
she had always been used to see crowds make way for her; she was now
surprised to feel herself jostled in the streets by passengers, who were
all full of their own affairs, hurrying different ways, in pursuit of
objects which probably seemed to them as important as the search for an
unknown friend appeared to Angelina.
Betty Williams's friend's friend, the careful lad, who was to deliver
the letter to Miss Hodges, was a waiter at the Bush. Upon inquiry, it
was found that he had totally forgotten his promise: Angelina's letter
was, after much search, found in a bottle-drainer, so much stained
with port wine, that it was illegible. The man answered with the
most provoking nonchalance, when Angelina reproached him for his
carelessness--"That, indeed, no such person as Miss Hodges was to be
found: that nobody he could meet with had ever heard the name." They
who are extremely enthusiastic suffer continually from the total
indifference of others to their feelings; and young people can scarcely
conceive the extent of this indifference until they have seen something
of the world. Seeing the world does not _always_ mean seeing a certain
set of company in London.
Angelina, the morning after her arrival at the Bush, took a
hackney-coach, and left the care of directing the coachman to Betty
Williams, who professed to have a perfect knowledge of Bristol. Betty
desired the man to drive to the drawbridge; and, at the sound of the
word drawbridge, various associations of ideas with the drawbridges
of ancient times were called up in Miss Warwick's imagination. How
different was the reality from her castles in the air! She was roused
from her reverie by the voices of Betty Williams and the coachman.
"Where _will_ I drive ye to, I ask you?" said the coachman, who was
an Irishman: "_Will_ I stand all day upon the drawbridge stopping the
passage?"
"Trive on a step, and I will get out and see apout me," said Betty: "I
know the look of the house, as well as I know any thing."
Betty got out of the coach, and walked up and down the street, looking
at the houses like one bewildered.
"Bad luck to you! for a Welsh woman as you are," exclaimed the coachman,
jumping down from the box, "will I lave the young lady standing in
the streets all day alone for you to be making a fool this way of us
both?--Sorrow take me now! If I do--"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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