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Kepp had given shelter to other lodgers who had called themselves gentlemen, and who had been pompous and grandiose of manner in their intercourse with the widow and her daughter; but O, what pitiful lacquered counterfeits, what Brummagem paste they had been, compared to the real gem!
And, in consequence, it began to be freely conversed, that there would be a great comfort in having the sides of the streets paved with flags, like the plainstones of Glasgow, and that an obligation should be laid on the landlords, to put up ronns to kepp the rain, and to conduct the water down in pipes by the sides of the houses; all which furnished Mr Hickery with fresh topics for his fasherie about the lamps, and was, as he said, proof and demonstration of that most impolitic, corrupt, and short-sighted job, the consequences of which would reach, in the shape of some new tax, every ramification of society; with divers other American argumentatives to the same effect.
Then hollowing back to the rear-guard of his detachment, he issued his farther orders: "Ratcliffe, come here, and detain the woman George, run and kepp the stile at the Duke's Walk Ratcliffe, come here directly but first knock out that mad bitch's brains!" "Ye had better rin for it, Madge," said Ratcliffe, "for it's ill dealing wi' an angry man."
His marriage with Mary Anne Kepp had been the one grateful impulse of his life; and even the sentiment which had prompted that marriage had been by no means free from the taint of selfishness.
The fanatic can never forgive the wretch who disbelieves in the divinity of his god; and women who love as blindly and foolishly as Mary Anne Kepp are the most bigoted of worshippers.
Kepp and her daughter were wont to spend their evenings in the lodger's apartment now; for the invalid complained bitterly of "the horrors" when they left him. "I have taken you for all sorts of people, Mary Anne," pursued the Captain dreamily. "Sometimes I have fancied you were the Countess of Jersey, and I could see her smile as she looked at me when I was first presented to her.
Then hollowing back to the rear-guard of his detachment, he issued his farther orders: "Ratcliffe, come here, and detain the woman George, run and kepp the stile at the Duke's Walk Ratcliffe, come here directly but first knock out that mad bitch's brains!" "Ye had better rin for it, Madge," said Ratcliffe, "for it's ill dealing wi' an angry man."
The ministering angel who comforted this helpless and broken-down wayfarer was only a low-born ignorant girl called Mary Anne Kepp a girl who had waited upon the Captain during his residence in her mother's house, but of whom he had taken about as much notice as he had been wont to take of the coloured servants who tended him when he was with his regiment in India.
If the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, I suppose the hawks and vultures take care of themselves. I have tried my luck as a shorn lamb, and the tempest has been very bitter for me; so I have no alternative but to join the vultures." Mary Anne Kepp stared wonderingly at her mother's lodger.
"And you'd have turned him out to die in the streets, mother!" cried Mary; "I didn't think you was so 'artless." From this time there was ill-feeling between Mrs. Kepp and her daughter, who had been hitherto one of the most patient and obedient of children.
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