I should like to
know whether her little conceited noddle, or her father's old crazy
calculating jolter-pate, breeds most whimsies. But then there's that
two hundred pounds a-year in dirty land, and the father is held a
close chuff, though a fanciful--he is our landlord besides, and she
has begged a late day from him for our rent; so, God help me, I must
be comfortable--besides, the little capricious devil is my only key to
get at Master George Heriot's secret, and it concerns my character to
find that out; and so, ANDIAMOS, as the lingua franca hath it."
Thus pondering, she moved forward with hasty strides until she arrived
at the watchmaker's habitation. The attendant admitted them by means
of a pass-key. Onward glided Dame Ursula, now in glimmer and now in
gloom, not like the lovely Lady Cristabelle through Gothic sculpture
and ancient armour, but creeping and stumbling amongst relics of old
machines, and models of new inventions in various branches of
mechanics with which wrecks of useless ingenuity, either in a broken
or half-finished shape, the apartment of the fanciful though ingenious
mechanist was continually lumbered.
At length they attained, by a very narrow staircase, pretty Mistress
Margaret's apartment, where she, the cynosure of the eyes of every
bold young bachelor in Fleet Street, sat in a posture which hovered
between the discontented and the disconsolate.
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