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In happy ignorance she sat fanning herself for a few seconds; then suddenly starting and stretching forward to the front row, where five of her young ladies were wedged, she aimed with her fan at each of their backs in quick succession, and in a more than audible whisper asked, "Cecy! Issy! Henny! Queeney! Miss Coates, where's Berry?"
'This morning it was all connoisseurship; we went to see some pictures painted by a gentleman-artist, Mr. Taylor, of this place; my master makes one, every where, and has got a good dawling companion to ride with him now. He looks well enough, but I have no notion of health for a man whose mouth cannot be sewed up. Burney and I and Queeney teize him every meal he eats, and Mrs.
Thereupon Lord Simon Pitscrew calls to Queeney, asking him 'why Madeira had been supplied instead of Esslemont's renowned old Sherry? A second Welsh gentleman gave his assurances that his friend had not said it was Madeira. But Lord Brailstone accused them of the worse unkindness to a venerable Old Brown Sherry, in attributing a Madeira flavour to it.
'Ah, said he, nodding over her mania of the perpetual suspicion. 'Leddings, Queeney, the servants here, run smoothly? 'They do: they are happy in serving. 'You see, we English are not such bad fellows when we're known. The climate to-day, for example, is rather trying. 'I miss colours most in England, said Carinthia. 'I like the winds. Now and then we have a day to remember.
Lord Mowbray and I looked at each other, struck by the same sentiment, pained for this elegant timid young creature, as we saw her, all blushing and reluctant, forced by the irresistible fat orderer of all things to "step up on the seat," to step forward from bench to bench, and then wait in painful pre-eminence while Issy, and Cecy, and Queeney, and Miss Coates, settled how they could make room, or which should vacate her seat in her favour.
Her ladyship attentive at all to affairs of the house? 'Every day with Queeney; at intervals with Leddings. 'Excellent! You speak like a fellow recording the devout observances of a great dame with her minor and superior, ecclesiastical comforters. Regular at church? 'Her ladyship goes. 'A woman without religion, Gower Woodseer, is a weed on the water, or she's hard as nails. We shall see.
One can't always be thinking of people's different persuasions you know and if one asked a question, just for information's sake, or made a natural remark, as I did t'other day, Queeney, you know, just about Jew butchers, and pigeons 'It's a pity, said I, 'that Jews must always have Jew butchers, Miss Berry, and that there is so many things they can't touch: one can't have pigeons nor hares at one's table, said I, thinking only of my second course; 'as to pork, Henny, says I, 'that's a coarse butcher's meat, which I don't regret, nor the alderman, a pinch o' snuff' now, you know, I thought that was kind of me; but Miss Montenero took it all the wrong way, quite to heart so, you've no idear!
Chumley Potts offered generally to bet that he would distinguish blindfold at a single sip any Madeira from any first-class Sherry, Old Brown or Pale. 'Single sip or smell! Ambrose Mallard cried, either for himself or his comrade, Queeney could not say which. Of all Lord Fleetwood's following, Mr. Potts and Mr.
Piozzi's eldest daughter, died. She was ninety-five years old. Her long life connected our generation with that of Johnson and Burke. She was the last survivor of the Streatham "set," for, as "Queeney," she had held a not unimportant place in it. She was at Johnson's death-bed.
Years later, this butler, Joshua Queeney, 'a much enfeebled old man, retold and enlarged the tale of the enormous consumption of his best wine; with a sacred oath to confirm it, and a tear expressive of elegiacal feelings.
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