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I wouldn't mind taking a bite myself"; and the good woman and her assistants laughed heartily over this standing joke of the evening, while Auntie Lammer, seeing that Mrs. Gubling was the leading spirit of the supper-room, quivered in all her vast proportions with politic and propitious mirth.
I couldn't endure to see you, Miss Lottie, going around with that clodhopper of a farmer, and, worst of all, how could you touch that great mountain of flesh they called Auntie Lammer?" "Many men of many minds," trilled out Lottie; but she thought of Hemstead's treatment of the poor old creature in contrast.
Her mother, old Luckie Loup-the-Dyke, "a canty carline" as was within twenty miles of her, according to the unanimous report of the "cummers," or gossips, sat by the fire in the full glory of a grogram gown, lammer beads, and a clean cockernony, whiffing a snug pipe of tobacco, and superintending the affairs of the kitchen; for sight more interesting to the anxious heart and craving entrails of the desponding seneschal than either buxom dame or canty cummer there bubbled on the aforesaid bickering fire a huge pot, or rather cauldron, steaming with beef and brewis; while before it revolved two spits, turned each by one of the cooper's apprentices, seated in the opposite corners of the chimney, the one loaded with a quarter of mutton, while the other was graced with a fat goose and a brace of wild ducks.
Auntie Lammer, how did you get down here?" said Mrs. Gubling. "We hain't ready for you yet." "No matter," said Mrs. Lammer, "I thank the marcies I've got down safe, and I'm goin' to stay till I git my supper." "Can I help you?" asked Lottie, glancing curiously around the room.
"Whoa now, steady, steady, I tell you," cried Harcourt; and all noted that at Lottie's shrill laugh the horses sprang into a momentary gallop. After a moment Hemstead replied, "You are nearer right than you think. In weakness, helplessness, and childish ignorance, she was a little sister." "Well, so be it. I have had enough of Mrs. Lammer and undeserved praise. Now all join in the chorus.
"I thought," said he, after a moment's pause, "that was a settled matter; they are continually together, and nothing else is spoken of betwixt Lammer Law and Traprain." "They may say what they please," replied his patron, "but I know better; and I'll give you Miss Lucy Ashton's health again, my boy."
His ideal is large." "Come, Mr. De Forrest," said Hemstead, "your wit is as heavy as Mrs. Lammer herself, and she nearly broke my back going down stairs." "O, pardon me. It was your back that suffered. I thought it was your heart. How came you to be so excessively polite then?" "I think Miss Marsden is indulging in a bit of fun at my expense.
"Whoa there, steady now," cried Harcourt to the horses; and Hemstead, though sitting with his back to him, noted that he was too much engrossed with their management to speak often, even to Addie who sat beside him. "Mr. Hemstead said that Auntie Lammer was more than a duchess," added Lottie, laughing. "True, she's a monster. Bat what did Mr. Hemstead call her?"
It was the first, and I hope it will be the last time I ever do anything so melodramatic." "Mr. Hemstead must be an ideal knight, as we learn from his phrase 'in either case," said Lottie. "He would have us believe that he is entirely impartial in his homage to our sex. And, now I think of it, he was more polite to old Auntie Lammer than ever he has been to me."
The teacher was somewhat strict, and it may have been in some of her passes with Connor, the "bubblingoverest" of all her youngsters, that she earned the name of a "daisy lammer." But the boy knew some things by heart that could not be learned at school. To his ear, the steam whistle of each boat spoke its name as plainly as if it could talk.
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