_Beef and Pudding.-An Old English Comedy._
It is necessary that we should leave our hero Nigel for a time,
although in a situation neither safe, comfortable, nor creditable, in
order to detail some particulars which have immediate connexion with
his fortunes.
It was but the third day after he had been forced to take refuge in
the house of old Trapbois, the noted usurer of Whitefriars, commonly
called Golden Trapbois, when the pretty daughter of old Ramsay, the
watchmaker, after having piously seen her father finish his breakfast,
(from the fear that he might, in an abstruse fit of thought, swallow
the salt-cellar instead of a crust of the brown loaf,) set forth from
the house as soon as he was again plunged into the depth of
calculation, and, accompanied only by that faithful old drudge, Janet,
the Scots laundress, to whom her whims were laws, made her way to
Lombard Street, and disturbed, at the unusual hour of eight in the
morning, Aunt Judith, the sister of her worthy godfather.
The venerable maiden received her young visitor with no great
complacency; for, naturally enough, she had neither the same
admiration of her very pretty countenance, nor allowance for her
foolish and girlish impatience of temper, which Master George Heriot
entertained. Still Mistress Margaret was a favourite of her brother's,
whose will was to Aunt Judith a supreme law; and she contented herself
with asking her untimely visitor, "what she made so early with her
pale, chitty face, in the streets of London?"
"I would speak with the Lady Hermione," answered the almost breathless
girl, while the blood ran so fast to her face as totally to remove the
objection of paleness which Aunt Judith had made to her complexion.
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