d had been performed under suspicious
circumstances; and as Lady Eleanor arrived here in her natural aspect
of a pretty girl, while Miss Ponsonby had condescended to accompany
her in the garb of a smart footman in buckskin breeches, years and
years elapsed ere full justice was done to the character of their
romance. {26} We proceeded up the hill, and found everything about
them and their habitation odd and extravagant beyond report. Imagine
two women, one apparently seventy, the other sixty-five, dressed in
heavy blue riding habits, enormous shoes, and men's hats, with their
petticoats so tucked up, that at the first glance of them, fussing
and tottering about their porch in the agony of expectation, we took
them for a couple of hazy or crazy old sailors. On nearer inspection
they both wear a world of brooches, rings, &c., and Lady Eleanor
positively _orders_--several stars and crosses, and a red ribbon,
exactly like a K.C.B. To crown all, they have crop heads, shaggy,
rough, bushy, and as white as snow, the one with age alone, the other
assisted by a sprinkling of powder. The elder lady is almost blind,
and every way much decayed; the other, the ci-devant groom, in good
preservation. But who could paint the prints, the dogs, the cats,
the miniatures, the cram of cabinets, clocks, glass-cases, books,
bijouterie, dragon-china, nodding mandarins, and whirligigs of every
shape and hue--the whole house outside and in (for we must see
everything to the dressing-closets), _covered_ with carved oak, very
rich and fine some of it--and the illustrated copies of Sir W.'s
poems, and the joking simpering compliments about Waverley, and the
anxiety to know who McIvor really was, and the absolute devouring of
the poor Unknown, who had to carry off, besides all the rest, one
small bit of literal _butter_ dug up in a Milesian stone jar lately
from the bottom of some Irish bog. Great romance (_i.e._ absurd
innocence of character) one must have looked for; but it was
confounding to find this mixed up with such eager curiosity, and
enormous knowledge of the tattle and scandal of the world they had so
long left. Their tables were piled with newspapers from every corner
of the kingdom, and they seemed to have the deaths and marriages of
the antipodes at their fingers' ends. Their albums and autographs