aithful housekeeper, was
presented, and had a shake of the hand. The Colonel knew all about
Hannah: ere he had been in England a week, a basket containing pots of
jam of her confection, and a tongue of Hannah's curing, had arrived
for the Colonel. That very night when his servant had lodged Colonel
Newcome's effects at the neighbouring hotel, Hannah was in possession
of one of the Colonel's shirts, she and her mistress having previously
conspired to make a dozen of those garments for the family benefactor.

All the presents which Newcome had ever transmitted to his sister-in-law
from India had been taken out of the cotton and lavender in which
the faithful creature kept them. It was a fine hot day in June, but I
promise you Miss Honeyman wore her blazing scarlet Cashmere shawl; her
great brooch, representing the Taj of Agra, was in her collar; and her
bracelets (she used to say, I am given to understand they are called
bangles, my dear, by the natives) decorated the sleeves round her lean
old hands, which trembled with pleasure as they received the kind grasp
of the Colonel of colonels. How busy those hands had been that morning!
What custards they had whipped!--what a triumph of pie-crusts they had
achieved! Before Colonel Newcome had been ten minutes in the house, the
celebrated veal-cutlets made their appearance. Was not the whole house
adorned in expectation of his coming? Had not Mr. Kuhn, the affable
foreign gentleman of the first-floor lodgers, prepared a French dish?
Was not Betty on the look-out, and instructed to put the cutlets on
the fire at the very moment when the Colonel's carriage drove up to her
mistress's door? The good woman's eyes twinkled, the kind old hand and
voice shook, as, holding up a bright glass of Madeira, Miss Honeyman
drank the Colonel's health. "I promise you, my dear Colonel," says she,
nodding her head, adorned with a bristling superstructure of lace and
ribbons, "I promise you, that I can drink your health in good wine!" The
wine was of his own sending, and so were the China fire-screens, and the
sandalwood workbox, and the ivory cardcase, and those magnificent pink
and white chessmen, carved like little sepoys and mandarins, with the
castles on elephants' backs, George the Third and his queen in pink
ivory, against the Emperor of China and lady in white--the delight
of Clive's childhood, the chief ornament of the old spinster's
sitting-room.

Miss Honeyman's little feast was pronoun