The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties (Volume 2 of 5)Burney, Fanny
History
The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties (Volume 2 of 5)
Burney, Fanny
France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799 -- Refugees -- Fiction; Historical fiction; Refugees -- Fiction; War stories
Ellis, looking away from him, pronounced a repulsive negative.
An elderly gentleman, who was walking up and down the room, now bowed to
her. Not knowing him, she let his salutation pass apparently
disregarded; when, some of her cakes accidentally falling from the form,
he eagerly picked them up, saying, as he grasped them in his hand,
'Faith, Madam, you had better have eaten them at once. You had, faith!
Few things are mended by delay. We are all at our best at first. These
cakes are no more improved by being mottled with the dirt of the floor,
than a pretty woman is by being marked with the small pox. I know
nothing that i'n't the worse for a put-off, ... unless it be a quarrel.'
Ellis, then, through his voice and language, discovered her fellow
voyager, Mr Riley; though a considerable change in his appearance, from
his travelling garb, had prevented a more immediate recollection.
Additional disturbance now seized her, lest he should recur to the
suspicious circumstances of her voyage and arrival.
While he still stood before her, declaiming upon the squeezed cakes,
which he held in his hand, Mr Tedman, coming softly back, and gently
pushing him aside, produced, with a self-pleased countenance, a small
plate of bread and butter, saying, 'Look, here, my dear, I've brought
you a few nice slices; for I see the misfortune that befel my cakes, of
their falling down; and I resolved you should not be the worse for it.
But I advise you to eat this at once, for fear of accidents; only take
care,' with a smile, 'that you don't grease your pretty fingers.'
He did not smile singly; Sir Lyell more than bore him company, and Riley
laughed aloud saying,
''Twould be pity, indeed, if she did not take care of her pretty
fingers, 'twould, faith! when she can work them so cunningly. I can't
imagine how the lady could sit so patiently, to hear that old Welsh man
thrum the cords in that bang wang way, when she can touch them herself,
like a little Queen David, to put all one's feelings in a fever. I have
listened at her door, till I have tingled all over with heat, in the
midst of the hard frost. And, sometimes, I have sat upon the stairs, to
hear her, till I have been so bent double, and numbed, that my nose has
almost joined my toes, and you might have rolled me down to the
landing-place without uncurbing me. You might, faith!'
Ellis now further discovered, that Mr Riley was the listening new
lodger. Her apprehensions, however, of his recollection subsided, when
she found him wholly unsuspicious that he had ever seen her before; and
called to mind her own personal disguise at their former meeting.
Sir Lyell, piqued to see her monopolized by two such fogrums as he
thought Messieurs Riley and Tedman, was bending forward to address her
more freely himself, when Lady Barbara Frankland, suddenly perceiving
her, flew to take her hand, with the most cordial expressions of partial
and affectionate regard.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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