communicate. "Oh, mamma," she exclaimed, "who was that that came into Morrison's thread and needle store just as you passed?—a lady with an ermine boa,—you bowed to her."
"Mrs. Kingson. Why, Sabina Jane?"
"The lady that was with her asked her, when they got into the shop, who she bowed to? She said, 'That Mrs. Finley that left her card at my house!'—'Does she keep a carriage?' asked the other lady; and then she took up her eye-glass and looked after you, and said, so everybody might have heard her in the shop, 'Liveries! and a coat of arms!—no wonder we are a laughing-stock to foreigners.'"
"Well," answered the perturbed and perplexed mother, "I do wonder what is the harm of liveries? It is next to impossible to find a servant that is willing to wear them; that's a proof they are genteel; and then, as to the coat of arms, I am sure the man that made the harness said it was the latest pattern he had in his shop. That coach," she continued, "has been nothing but a plague to me. Your father is always fretting about the expense, and complaining that the coachman cheats him; and John will do nothing but drive the horses; and everybody that has a coachman in livery has a footman, and your father thinks the waiter can turn into a footman when I want one, but he don't know how inconvenient that is. Nobody knows, but them that has them, the trials of keeping a carriage."[1]
- ↑ One of these incidental trials was met by a ready ingenuity that deserves a more enduring preservation than we can give it. A gentleman told his coachman to bring him a pitcher of fresh water from the pump. "I can't, sir."—"Why not?"—"Tis not my business."—"What the deuse is your business?"—"Taking care of the carriage, sir."—"Bring up the carriage, then." The carriage came: "John" (to the waiter), "get into the carriage, and bring me a pitcher of fresh water from the pump."
