ove once to the
Protestant Hero and had a syllabub in the garden there: and the
hostess would insist upon calling my wife her ladyship during the whole
afternoon. We also visited Mr. Johnson, and took tea with him (the
ingenious Mr. Goldsmith was of the company); the Doctor waited upon my
wife to her coach. But our most frequent visits were to Aunt Bernstein,
and I promise you I was not at all jealous because my aunt presently
professed to have a wonderful liking for Theo.

This liking grew so that she would have her most days in the week, or to
stay altogether with her, and thought that Theo's child and husband
were only plagues to be sure, and hated us in the most amusing way
for keeping her favourite from her. Not that my wife was unworthy
of anybody's favour; but her many forced absences, and the constant
difficulty of intercourse with her, raised my aunt's liking for a while
to a sort of passion. She poured in notes like love-letters; and her
people were ever about our kitchen. If my wife did not go to her, she
wrote heartrending appeals, and scolded me severely when I saw her; and,
the child being ill once (it hath pleased Fate to spare our Captain to
be a prodigious trouble to us, and a wholesome trial for our tempers),
Madame Bernstein came three days running to Lambeth; vowed there was
nothing the matter with the baby;--nothing at all;--and that we only
pretended his illness, in order to vex her.

The reigning Countess of Castlewood was just as easy and affable with
her old aunt, as with other folks great and small. "What air you all
about, scraping and bowing to that old woman, I can't tell, noways!" her
ladyship would say. "She a fine lady! Nonsense! She ain't no more fine
than any other lady: and I guess I'm as good as any of 'em with their
high heels and their grand airs! She a beauty once! Take away her wig,
and her rouge, and her teeth; and what becomes of your beauty, I'd like
to know? Guess you'd put it all in a bandbox, and there would be nothing
left but a shrivelled old woman!" And indeed the little homilist only
spoke too truly. All beauty must at last come to this complexion; and
decay, either underground or on the tree. Here was old age, I fear,
without reverence. Here were grey hairs, that were hidden or painted.
The world was still here, and she tottering on it, and clinging to it
with her crutch. For fourscore years she had moved on it, and eaten
of the tree, forbidden and permitted. She had h