Cat and Fiddle," near the Lunnon-road. Come up,
will you? Would you like to come in first and talk a bit wi' the governor?
Father, you know, he's a bit silly, he is, this while.' I found that
the phrase meant only _bodily_ infirmity. 'He took a pain o' Friday,
newralgie--something or other he calls it--rheumatics it is when it takes
old "Giblets" there; and he's sitting in his own room; or maybe you'd like
better to come to your bedroom first, for it is dirty work travelling, they
do say.'

Yes; I preferred the preliminary adjustment. Mary Quince was standing
behind me; and as my voluble kinswoman talked on, we had each ample time
and opportunity to observe the personnel of the other; and she made no
scruple of letting me perceive that she was improving it, for she stared me
full in the face, taking in evidently feature after feature; and she felt
the material of my mantle pretty carefully between her finger and thumb,
and manually examined my chain and trinkets, and picked up my hand as she
might a glove, to con over my rings.

I can't say, of course, exactly what impression I may have produced on her.
But in my cousin Milly I saw a girl who looked younger than her years,
plump, but with a slender waist, with light hair, lighter than mine, and
very blue eyes, rather round; on the whole very good-looking. She had an
odd swaggering walk, a toss of her head, and a saucy and imperious, but
rather good-natured and honest countenance. She talked rather loud, with a
good ringing voice, and a boisterous laugh when it came.

If _I_ was behind the fashion, what would Cousin Monica have thought of
her? She was arrayed, as she had stated, in black twilled cotton expressive
of her affliction; but it was made almost as short in the skirt as that of
the prints of the Bavarian broom girls. She had white cotton stockings,
and a pair of black leather boots, with leather buttons, and, for a lady,
prodigiously thick soles, which reminded me of the navvy boots I had so
often admired in _Punch_. I must add that the hands with which she assisted
her scrutiny of my dress, though pretty, were very much sunburnt indeed.

'And what's _her_ name?' she demanded, nodding to Mary Quince, who was
gazing on her awfully, with round eyes, as an inland spinster might upon a
whale beheld for the first time.

Mary courtesied, and I answered.

'Mary Quince,' she repeated. 'You're welcome, Quince. What shall I call
her? I've a name for all o' them. Old