"May I inquire how you rested, after your escape from the ten thousand rats, and twenty thousand mice, which attacked you before you changed your room?"
"Why, then, to use a homely but a very expressive phrase, it was out of the frying-pan into the fire."
"Mercy on us! how can that be; you had what is considered the best bed in the house."
"O, I dare say--no doubt, the softest I ever lay in; but instead of ten thousand rats, and twenty thousand mice, I had not been in it fifteen minutes ere a hundred and twenty thousand hornets, wasps, scorpions, and centipedes, two or three thousand hedge-hogs, and as many porcupines, seemed to be full drive at me; and had I not soon been relieved by perspiration, I should assuredly have gone mad, and been in bedlam. Nervous headache! Why, madam, it would have been considered paradise, compared with the purgatory you inflicted on me."
Her eyes sparkled with glee--and she began to laugh joyously; but soon checking herself, and assuming a sort of mock sympathy, said,
"I am very sorry--_very_ sorry, indeed, that you should have found your bed so like the love of some men, rather hot to hold."
On inquiring whether the grand coroneted bed, which had been as a hot gridiron to me, was intended for any particular person, she informed me it was for a Russian nobleman, Baron Nicholay, a much respected friend of Mr. Penn's, who sometimes visited Stoke, and who, being used to a bed of down in the cold climate of his own country, Mr. Penn, with his characteristic kindness and attention, had it prepared for the baron's especial comfort. She added that the reason why Mr. Penn had all his life remained a bachelor, was in consequence of an early attachment which he had formed for the baron's sister; that they were to have been married, but in driving the lady in a _drouschky_, or sledge, on the ice of the Neva, at St. Petersburg, by some fatality the ice gave way, and notwithstanding the most strenuous exertions of her lover, and the servant who stood behind the sled, the lady, by the force of the current, was swept away under the ice, and never afterward seen. That this shocking accident had such effect on Mr. Penn's mind, as well it might, he never could think of any other woman, but remained true and constant to his first love, mourning her tragic end all his life.