In our pattens we picked our way home with extra care that night,
so refined and delicate were our perceptions after drinking tea
with "my lady."
CHAPTER IX--SIGNOR BRUNONI
Soon after the events of which I gave an account in my last paper,
I was summoned home by my father's illness; and for a time I
forgot, in anxiety about him, to wonder how my dear friends at
Cranford were getting on, or how Lady Glenmire could reconcile
herself to the dulness of the long visit which she was still paying
to her sister-in-law, Mrs Jamieson. When my father grew a little
stronger I accompanied him to the seaside, so that altogether I
seemed banished from Cranford, and was deprived of the opportunity
of hearing any chance intelligence of the dear little town for the
greater part of that year.
Late in November--when we had returned home again, and my father
was once more in good health--I received a letter from Miss Matty;
and a very mysterious letter it was. She began many sentences
without ending them, running them one into another, in much the
same confused sort of way in which written words run together on
blotting-paper. All I could make out was that, if my father was
better (which she hoped he was), and would take warning and wear a
great-coat from Michaelmas to Lady-day, if turbans were in fashion,
could I tell her? Such a piece of gaiety was going to happen as
had not been seen or known of since Wombwell's lions came, when one
of them ate a little child's arm; and she was, perhaps, too old to
care about dress, but a new cap she must have; and, having heard
that turbans were worn, and some of the county families likely to
come, she would like to look tidy, if I would bring her a cap from
the milliner I employed; and oh, dear! how careless of her to
forget that she wrote to beg I would come and pay her a visit next
Tuesday; when she hoped to have something to offer me in the way of
amusement, which she would not now more particularly describe, only
sea-green was her favourite colour.
Pages:
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150