parties at her own house she always was
dressed entirely in white--in some rich white silk, with a white bonnet
covered with a rich blonde or lace vail on her head; she looked like a
little old witch bride. I recollect a curious scene my mother described
to me, which she witnessed one day when calling on Lady Cork, whom she
had known for many years. She was shown into her dressing-room, where
the old lady was just finishing her toilet. She was about to put on her
gown, and remaining a moment without it showed my mother her arms and
neck, which were even then still white and round and by no means
unlovely, and said, pointing to her maid, "Isn't it a shame! she won't
let me wear my gowns low or my sleeves short any more." To which the
maid responded by throwing the gown over her mistress's shoulders,
exclaiming at the same time, "Oh, fie, my lady! you ought to be ashamed
of yourself to talk so at your age!"--a rebuke which the nonagenarian
beauty accepted with becoming humility.

The unfortunate propensity of poor Lady Cork to appropriate all sorts of
things belonging to other people, valueless quite as often as valuable,
was matter of public notoriety, so that the fashionable London
tradesmen, to whom her infirmity in this respect was well known, never
allowed their goods to be taken to her carriage for inspection, but
always exacted that she should come into their shops, where an
individual was immediately appointed to follow her about and watch her
during the whole time she was making her purchases.

Whenever she visited her friends in the country, her maid on her return
home used to gather together whatever she did not recognize as belonging
to her mistress, and her butler transmitted it back to the house where
they had been staying. I heard once a most ludicrous story of her
carrying off, _faute de mieux_, a _hedgehog_ from a place where the
creature was a pet of the porters, and was running tame about the hall
as Lady Cork crossed it to get into her carriage. She made her poor
"Memory" seize up the prickly beast, but after driving a few miles with
this unpleasant spiked foot-warmer, she found means to dispose of it at
a small town, where she stopped to change horses, to a baker, to whom
she gave it in payment for a sponge cake, assuring him that a hedgehog
would be invaluable in his establishment for the destruction of black
beetles, with which she knew, from good authority, that the premises of
bakers were always