She stood in the middle of her chamber, a massive figure pouring forth ludicrous complaint. It was as if a stork should seek to emulate a nightingale. Susan knelt on the floor and industriously stitched away at the ragged train; Joan knelt with innumerable pins stuck between her pearly teeth and judiciously fastened several gaps in her attire, while Elizabeth, who was being courted by Johnny, the _Green Dragon's_ sibilant hostler, rubbed away at the mud with as near an imitation of the sounds produced by her lover's stringy throat as the softness of her own would allow. "I have been greatly distressed," said the widow, "grossly deceived, intolerably put about for, though Mr. Ripple has the character of a block of marble, it don't become a woman to be seen alone with a man anywhere, especially in a yellow chaise which attracts everybody's attention. I vow I heard that odious young Miss Kitcat laugh from her balcony as we flew past--yes, flew--and such bumping! I dare swear I'm bruised from head to foot, and my skin shows the smallest mark. I remember when I was a young woman, I stepped a minuet with young Mr. Heavibois of Heavibois Hall, and I declare he might have been taking the grossest liberties all through the evening, for the way my wrist was marked. Lud! it was as purple as my grandmother's silk coverlet that was given to her by a young lieutenant in the Navy, and was thought to belong to the wife of the Cham of Tartary, though I dare say he bought it in Cheapside for ten shillings, being a young gentleman on whose word nobody could rely, that is the worst of men, young women, you cannot trust 'em. And now my own daughter has run away with a London spark, and I, her own mother, must give up half a score routs and my Lady Pickadilly's drum--the most fashionable affair of the kind that will ever be known in Curtain Wells, for my Lady Pickadilly is newly come from town with her second son the Hon. John Hyde, as quiet a young gentleman as ever said Bo! to a goose, and here we are nearly into April, and if my daughter drowns herself from London Bridge, why then I shall be wearing black at the Fetes Champetres and a pretty figure I shall be truly! though, indeed, if one had the courage to wear a white velvet vizard, I might very well pass for an Allegory of Moonlight--and yet that would never do, for to be sure that malicious creature Mrs. Dudding, whose Conversazione last month was the completest failure ever known, would make one of her odious epigrams about poor Mr. Moon, the best natured of gentlemen and the very personification of the milk of human kindness. To be sure, his ankles are very big, but indeed I vow if one were to regard all the defects in humanity, very few of us would be able to hold up our heads. Mr. Ripple himself is the smallest man in the Wells, but nobody esteems him the less for that. To be sure, I think he was very ill-advised,--though for that matter he was never known to take