ouring towns in her gilt coach-and-six,
or to the village in her chair, and asserted a quasi-regal right of
homage from her tenants and other clodpoles. She lectured the parson
on his divinity; the bailiff on his farming; instructed the astonished
housekeeper how to preserve and pickle; would have taught the great
London footmen to jump behind the carriage, only it was too high for her
little ladyship to mount; gave the village gossips instructions how to
nurse and take care of their children long before she had one herself;
and as for physic, Madam Esmond in Virginia was not more resolute about
her pills and draughts than Miss Lydia, the earl's new bride. Do you
remember the story of the Fisherman and the Genie, in the Arabian
Nights? So one wondered with regard to this lady, how such a prodigious
genius could have been corked down into such a little bottle as her
body. When Mr. Warrington returned to London after his first nuptial
visit, she brought him a little present for her young friends in Dean
Street, as she called them (Theo being older, and Hetty scarce younger
than herself), and sent a trinket to one and a book to the other--G.
Warrington always vowing that Theo's present was a doll, while Hetty's
share was a nursery-book with words of one syllable. As for Mr. Will,
her younger brother-in-law, she treated him with a maternal gravity
and tenderness, and was in the habit of speaking of and to him with a
protecting air, which was infinitely diverting to Warrington, although
Will's usual curses and blasphemies were sorely increased by her
behaviour.

As for old age, my Lady Lydia had little respect for that accident in
the life of some gentlemen and gentlewomen; and, once the settlements
were made in her behalf, treated the ancient Van den Bosch and his large
periwig with no more ceremony than Dinah her black attendant, whose
great ears she would pinch, and whose woolly pate she would pull without
scruple, upon offence given--so at least Dinah told Gumbo, who told
his master. All the household trembled before my lady the Countess: the
housekeeper, of whom even my lord and the dowager had been in awe; the
pampered London footmen, who used to quarrel if they were disturbed at
their cards, and grumbled as they swilled the endless beer, now stepped
nimbly about their business when they heard her ladyship's call; even
old Lockwood, who had been gate-porter for half a century or more, tried
to rally his poor old wander