e was greatly indisposed to resign that
character. Though it was a sharp January morning, her neck was
unprotected by the warm tippet which all the other ladies wore. There
was nothing to keep her warm in that quarter except a necklace. Large
ear-rings depended from her ears, half a dozen rings were worn outside
her gloves, a long chatelaine hung from her neck to her waist, to which
were attached a bunch of trinkets of all shapes and sizes. She was
laced very tight, and her poor nose was conscious of it, as it showed by
blushing at the enormity. Under her left arm was a very small, very
fat, very blunt-nosed Dutch pug. Phoebe at once guessed that the lady
was Mrs Vane, and that the pug was Cupid.

"Well, Clarissa!" said Mrs Jane, as the new-comer took her seat at the
door opposite Rhoda; "pity you hadn't a nose-ring!"

Mrs Vane made no answer beyond an affected smile, but Cupid growled at
Mrs Jane, whom he did not seem to hold in high esteem. The coach, with
a good effort on the part of the horses, got under way, and rumbled off
towards Tewkesbury.

"And how does Sir Richard, my Lady Betty?" inquired Madam, with much
cordiality.

"Oh, extremely well, I thank you," answered Lady Betty. "So well,
indeed, now, that he talks of a journey to London, and a month at the
Bath on his way thence."

"What takes him to London?" asked Mrs Jane.

"'Tis for the maids he thinks to go. He would have Betty and Gatty have
a season's polishing; and for Molly--poor little soul!--he is wishful to
have her touched."

"Is she as ill for the evil as ever, poor child?"

"Oh, indeed, yes! 'Tis a thousand pities; and such sprightly parts as
she discovers!"

[Note: So clever as she is.]

"'Tis a mercy for such as she that the Queen doth touch," said Mrs
Jane. "King William never did."

"Is that no mistake?" gently suggested Lady Betty.

"Never _dared_," came rather grimly from Madam.

"Well, maybe," said Mrs Jane. "But I protest I cannot see why Queen
Mary should not have done it, as well as her sister."

"I own I cannot but very much doubt," returned Madam, severely, "that
any good consequence should follow."

By which it will be perceived that Madam was an uncompromising Jacobite.
Mrs Jane had no particular convictions, but she liked to talk Whig,
because all around were Tories. Lady Betty was a Hanoverian Tory--that
is, what would be termed an extreme Tory in the present day, but
attached to the Protestant Succes