"Fie, for shame!" cries the old lady so exceedingly smartly dressed in the corner, whom one who did not see her face, or remark her figure, but who only looked at her gay clothing, would take to be twenty-three, though forty added to it would be within the mark--I mean the old lady with the nutmeg-grater face, so like the portrait of Hans Holbein's grand-aunt, which figures in many of his wood-cuts, but, especially in the accouchement of the Burgomaster's wife of Nuremburg. "Fie, for shame! What a very improper thing for a young lady, like Miss Rose Tracy, to make an appointment with her father's head-gardener. It is a breach of three of the Commandments!" (Let the reader sort them.) "It is indecent, dangerous, abominable, terrible, disgraceful, contrary to all the rules and regulations of society! What a shocking girl she must be!"
I will not defend her; I know that all the old ladies, in whatever garments, whether bifurcate or circumambient, will reasonably cry out upon Rose Tracy; but let us for a moment hear what it was that induced her to perform that which the philosophers and critics of Lambeth, and especially those nearest to the door of the famous peripatetic school of the Bricklayers'-arms, would call "a very young trick."
"Well, Arthur, what news do you bring us from the other side of the hills?" asked General Tracy, when his brother appeared at the dinner-table, on the second day after the departure of his last guest.
"Why, that the Abbey estate is certainly to be sold," replied Mr. Tracy. "I met Sir William at the court-house; and he informed me that it was his intention to dispose of the property in lots. He was particularly civil, and said, whatever arrangement might be necessary, either for my convenience or that of this part of the county, he would willingly make: so that the land required for the new road from H---- to Northferry, will not cost more than the mere worth of the ground at a valuation. I have seldom met with a more gentlemanly man, at least in manners."
"The heart may be a very different affair," said General Tracy.
"Of that we may discover something more in a few days," answered the other brother; "for I have asked him hereto settle the whole of this affair with me, as the Germans say _unter vier Augen_; and he comes here on Friday next, to spend a few days."