ould take them off my hands?
It's only to drop a card at Lady Blair's; and you could ask if Caroline
's better--though, poor thing, she can't be, of course; Dr. Y---- says
her malady is exactly my own. And then if you are passing Long's, tell
Sir Charles that our whist-party is put off--perhaps Grammont has told
him already. You may mention to Saunders that I shall not want the
horses till I return; and say I detest greys, they are so like city
people's equipages; and wait an instant'--here her ladyship took a small
ivory memorandum tablet from the table, and began reading from it a list
of commissions, some of them most ludicrously absurd. In the midst of
the catalogue my father entered hastily with his watch in his hand.

'You'll be dreadfully late on the road, Charlotte; and you forget Y----
must be back here early to-morrow.'

'So I had forgotten it,' said she with some animation; 'but we're quite
ready now. Clemence has done everything, I think. Come, John, give me
your arm, my dear: Julia always takes this side. Are you certain it
won't rain, Sir George?'

'I really cannot be positive,' said my father, smiling.

'I'm sure there's thunder in the air,' rejoined my mother; 'my nerves
would never bear a storm.'

Some dreadful catastrophe in the West Indies, where an earthquake had
swallowed up a whole population, occurred to her memory at the instant,
and the possibility of something similar occurring between Seven Oaks
and Tunbridge seemed to engross her entire attention. By this time we
reached the hall, where the servants, drawn up in double file, stood
in respectful silence. My mother's eyes were, however, directed upon
a figure which occupied the place next the door, and whose costume
certainly was strangely at variance with the accurate liveries about
him. An old white greatcoat with some twenty capes reaching nearly to
the ground (for the garment had been originally destined for a much
larger person), a glazed hat fastened down with a handkerchief passed
over it and tied under the chin, and a black-thorn stick with a little
bundle at the end of it were his most remarkable equipments.

'What is it? What can it be doing there?' said my mother, in a Siddons
tone of voice.

[Illustration: 3-081]

'What is it? Corny Delany, no less,' croaked out the little man in the
crankiest tone of his harsh voice. 'It's what remains of me, at laste!'

'Oh, yes,' said Julia, bursting into a laugh, 'Corny's coming as my