The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Old Time English
General
The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Old Time English
Detective and mystery stories; Fiction; Ghost stories
"What a pretty snuff-box!" he remarked, as I handed him mine, which
I am still old-fashioned enough to carry. It is a pretty old gold
box enough, but valuable to me especially as a relic of an old, old
relative, whom I can just remember as a child, when she was very
kind to me. "Yes; a pretty box. I can remember when many ladies--
most ladies, carried a box--nay, two boxes--tabatiere and
bonbonniere. What lady carries snuff-box now, hey? Suppose your
astonishment if a lady in an assembly were to offer you a prise? I
can remember a lady with such a box as this, with a tour, as we
used to call it then; with paniers, with a tortoise-shell cane,
with the prettiest little high-heeled velvet shoes in the world!--
ah! that was a time, that was a time! Ah, Eliza, Eliza, I have
thee now in my mind's eye! At Bungay on the Waveney, did I not
walk with thee, Eliza? Aha, did I not love thee? Did I not walk
with thee then? Do I not see thee still?"
This was passing strange. My ancestress--but there is no need to
publish her revered name--did indeed live at Bungay St. Mary's,
where she lies buried. She used to walk with a tortoise-shell
cane. She used to wear little black velvet shoes, with the
prettiest high heels in the world.
"Did you--did you--know, then, my great-gr-nd-m-ther?" I said.
He pulled up his coat sleeve--"Is that her name?" he said.
"Eliza--"
There, I declare, was the very name of the kind old creature
written in red on his arm.
"YOU knew her old," he said, divining my thoughts (with his strange
knack); "I knew her young and lovely. I danced with her at the
Bury ball. Did I not, dear, dear Miss ----?"
As I live, he here mentioned dear gr-nny's MAIDEN name. Her maiden
name was ----. Her honored married name was ----.
"She married your great-gr-ndf-th-r the year Poseidon won the
Newmarket Plate," Mr. Pinto dryly remarked.
Merciful powers! I remember, over the old shagreen knife and spoon
case on the sideboard in my gr-nny's parlor, a print by Stubbs of
that very horse. My grandsire, in a red coat, and his fair hair
flowing over his shoulders, was over the mantelpiece, and Poseidon
won the Newmarket Cup in the year 1783!
"Yes; you are right. I danced a minuet with her at Bury that very
night, before I lost my poor leg. And I quarreled with your
grandf--, ha!"
As he said "Ha!" there came three quiet little taps on the table--
it is the middle table in the "Gray's-Inn CoffeeHouse," under the
bust of the late Duke of W-ll-ngt-n.
"I fired in the air," he continued; "did I not?" (Tap, tap, tap.)
"Your grandfather hit me in the leg. He married three months
afterwards. 'Captain Brown,' I said 'who could see Miss Sm-th
without loving her?' She is there! She is there!" (Tap, tap,
tap.) "Yes, my first love--"
But here there came tap, tap, which everybody knows means "No."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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