d showed no such marks of
kindness, and affected to treat the lad roughly, and rebuked him sharply
for little faults, for which he in a manner asked pardon of young Esmond
when they were private, saying if he did not speak roughly, she would,
and his tongue was not such a bad one as his lady's--a point whereof the
boy, young as he was, was very well assured.

Great public events were happening all this while, of which the simple
young page took little count. But one day, riding into the neighboring
town on the step of my lady's coach, his lordship and she and Father
Holt being inside, a great mob of people came hooting and jeering round
the coach, bawling out "The Bishops for ever!" "Down with the Pope!" "No
Popery! no Popery! Jezebel, Jezebel!" so that my lord began to laugh,
my lady's eyes to roll with anger, for she was as bold as a lioness,
and feared nobody; whilst Mr. Holt, as Esmond saw from his place on the
step, sank back with rather an alarmed face, crying out to her ladyship,
"For God's sake, madam, do not speak or look out of window; sit still."
But she did not obey this prudent injunction of the Father; she thrust
her head out of the coach window, and screamed out to the coachman,
"Flog your way through them, the brutes, James, and use your whip!"

The mob answered with a roaring jeer of laughter, and fresh cries of
"Jezebel! Jezebel!" My lord only laughed the more: he was a languid
gentleman: nothing seemed to excite him commonly, though I have seen
him cheer and halloo the hounds very briskly, and his face (which was
generally very yellow and calm) grow quite red and cheerful during a
burst over the Downs after a hare, and laugh, and swear, and huzzah at a
cockfight, of which sport he was very fond. And now, when the mob began
to hoot his lady, he laughed with something of a mischievous look, as
though he expected sport, and thought that she and they were a match.

James the coachman was more afraid of his mistress than the mob,
probably, for he whipped on his horses as he was bidden, and the
post-boy that rode with the first pair (my lady always rode with her
coach-and-six,) gave a cut of his thong over the shoulders of one fellow
who put his hand out towards the leading horse's rein.

It was a market-day, and the country-people were all assembled with
their baskets of poultry, eggs, and such things; the postilion had no
sooner lashed the man who would have taken hold of his horse, but a
great cabbage