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He will esteem infinitely more the poorest of the workmen a wood-sawyer or a bell-hanger than a politician haranguing from the mantel, or an old literary dame who sparkles like a window in the Palais-Royal, and is tattooed like a Caribbean; he will prefer an old; wrinkled, village grand-dame in her white cap, who still hoes, although sixty years old, her little field of potatoes.
He read Virgil's Georgics till he did not know bere from barley; and had nearly destroyed the crofts of Beersheba while attempting to cultivate them according to the practice of Columella and Cato the Censor. These blunders occasioned grief to his grand-dame, and disconcerted the good opinion which her neighbour, Davie Deans, had for some time entertained of Reuben.
Presently, though, I saw him and I asked him, 'Captain, is she here? 'Yes, sir, she is, she never misses; that's the sort of a wife to have, sir; come here and let me introduce you. He pulled me up and introduced me to a sweet little old lady, in an old, threadbare dress and wrap, and a little, faded bonnet, whom I had seen as we came up, watching eagerly for someone, but whom I had not thought of as being possibly the Captain's grand-dame.
A very weird-looking cummer was the grand-dame with a broken, piping voice tremulous hands, and jaws that, like the stage witch wife's, ever munched and mumbled. She seldom spoke aloud, except to groan out a startlingly sudden ejaculation of "Oh, Lord," or "O dear;" these widows' mites cast into the conversational treasury did not greatly enhance its brilliancy.
I ran forthwith to the spot, and picked up the babe in my arms, seeing its red blood flow; but the elder woman rushed at me, beside her wits with rage, to snatch it from me; and whereas she was doubtless its mother or grand-dame, I might have yielded up the child, but that Ritter Franz came to me in haste to bid me, from my Aunt Jacoba, carry it to her.
What with her breeding and her foreign tongues, she would be sure to be set over our heads as under-governess, or the like, if she were not such an obstinate heretic, and keeping that stupid Humphreys so. We could have converted her long ago, if it were not for that Woodford and for her City grand-dame!
Boh dunna trouble yourself about me, sister. Ey dunna envy ye your luck. Ey dunna want to be adopted by a grand-dame. Ey'm content os ey am. Boh are na ye gettin' on rayther too fast, lass? Mother's consent has to be axed, ey suppose, efore ye leave her." "There is little fear of her refusal," observed Mistress Nutter. "Ey dunna knoa that," rejoined Jennet.
"There can be no doubt as to her being a witch, Master Potts," rejoined Nicholas; "her old grand-dame, Mother Chattox, has just vanished from our sight." "Has Mother Chattox been here?" cried Potts, opening his round eyes to their widest extent. "Not many minutes since," replied Nicholas. "In fact, she may be here still for aught I know." "Here! where?" cried Potts, looking round.
Preston has an Americo-Grecian face, and is a 'grand-dame. She talks of the blessings of slavery, and of the vain and self-recoiling efforts of her mother, who liberated many slaves and educated more, to reduce the evil; and is full of the troubles and robberies of foreign house-keeping and of the gossip of the diplomatic circle.
To this I was only able to reply that on one point at least she must change her mind, for that I knew for certain that old grand-dame Pernhart loved her truly. At this she cried out gladly and thankfully: "Oh, Margery! if only that were true!"
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