Page:Adventures of Roderick Random.pdf/76

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is a very lovely creature. she never sleeps or eats as other people do and is frequently so absent as to commit very strange mistakes and extravagancies.

Fraught with these useful instructions, I repaired to her house. She sat in her study, with one foot on the ground, and the other upon a high stool; her sandy locks hung down in disorder, her forehead was high and wrinkled, her eyes large, her nose long, her mouth capacious, her visage meagure, and her chin peaked like a shoemaker's paring knife; her upper lip contained a quantity of plain Spanish, which, by continual falling, had embroidered her neck, and her gown, that flowed loose about her; around her lay heaps of books, globes, quadrants, telescopes, and other learned apparatus. She being in a reverie when we entered, the maid did not think proper to disturb her; so we waited some minutes unobserved; she at length turned towards the door Here's the young man replied my conductress, whom Mrs. Sagely recommended as a footman to your ladyship. On this information she stared in my face for a considerable time, and then asked my name, which I thought proper to call John Brown. She bid the maid order a suit of new livery for me, and instruct me in the articles of my duty.