My new lady was young, as might be supposed of a lady that had been
carried off, by her own consent, to Scotland; but I could only see her
at first through her veil, which, from bashfulness or fashion, she kept
over her face. “And am I to walk through all this crowd of people, my
dearest love?” said she to Sir Condy, meaning us servants and tenants,
who had gathered at the hack gate. “My dear,” said Sir Condy, “there’s
nothing for it but to walk, or to let me carry you as far as the house,
for you see the back road is too narrow for a carriage, and the great
piers have tumbled down across the front approach; so there’s no driving
the right way, by reason of the ruins.” “Plato, thou reasonest well!”
said she, or words to that effect, which I could no ways understand; and
again, when her foot stumbled against a broken bit of a car-wheel, she
cried out, “Angels and ministers of grace defend us!” Well, thought I,
to be sure, if she’s no Jewish, like the last, she is a mad woman for
certain, which is as bad: it would have been as well for my poor master
to have taken up with poor Judy, who is in her right mind, any how.
She was dressed like a mad woman, moreover, more than like any one I
ever saw afore or since, and I could not take my eyes off her, but still
followed behind her; and her feathers on the top of her hat were broke
going in at the low back door, and she pulled out her little bottle out
of her pocket to smell to when she found herself in the kitchen, and
said, “I shall faint with the heat of this odious, odious place.” “My
dear, it’s only three steps across the kitchen, and there’s a fine air
if your veil was up,” said Sir Condy, and with that threw hack her veil,
so that I had then a full sight of her face; she had not at all the
colour of one going to faint, but a fine complexion of her own, as I
then took it to be, though her maid told me after it was all put on;
but even complexion and all taken in, she was no way, in point of good
looks, to compare to poor Judy; and with all she had a quality toss with
her; but may be it was my over-partiality to Judy, into whose place I
may say she stepped, that made me notice all this. To do her justice,
however, she was, when we came to know her better, very liberal in her
house-keeping, nothing at all of the skinflint in her; she left every
thing to the housekeeper; and her own maid, Mrs. Jane, who went with her
to Scotland, gave her the best of characters for generosity. She seldom
or ever wore a thing twice the same way, Mrs. Jane told us, and was
always pulling her things to pieces, and giving them away; never being
used, in her father’s house, to think of expense in any thing; and she
reckoned, to be sure, to go on the same way at Castle Rackrent; but,
when I came to inquire, I learned that her father was so mad with her
for running off, after his locking her up, and forbidding her to think
any more of Sir Condy, that he would not give her a farthing; and it was
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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