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As she hurried off to do it, the flutter of her spirits, and the agitation of her manner, were so strange, that the Carrier stood looking after her, quite confounded. "Did its mothers make it up a Beds, then!" cried Miss Slowboy to the Baby; "and did its hair grow brown and curly when its caps was lifted off, and frighten it, a precious Pets, a sitting by the fires!"
Colonel Slowboy was at hand to catch the fair one as she came near falling. He was her old beau, and he knew the weak points of her character; moreover he had splendid red whiskers and a million of money she married him, partly from ambition and partly from revenge. The moment they were united, Moses set sail for the United States, with his twenty thousand dollars, and arrived back safely.
And did its hair grow brown and curly when its cap was lifted off, and frighten it, a precious Pets, a-sitting by the fire!" It was a notable and exciting event to Miss Slowboy when she set out one day in the Carrier's cart, with her little mistress and the remarkable baby, to have dinner with Caleb Plummer's blind daughter, Bertha, who was Mrs. Dot's devoted friend.
Being always in a state of gaping admiration at everything, and absorbed, besides, in the perpetual contemplation of her mistress's perfections and the baby's, Miss Slowboy, in her little errors of judgment, may be said to have done equal honour to her head and to her heart; and though these did less honour to the baby's head, which they were the occasional means of bringing into contact with deal doors, dressers, stair-rails, bed-posts, and other foreign substances, still they were the honest results of Tilly Slowboy's constant astonishment at finding herself so kindly treated, and installed in such a comfortable home.
And this delighted John the Carrier beyond measure. The trip was a little foggy, to be sure, in the January weather, and was raw and cold. But who cared for such trifles! Not Dot, decidedly. Not Tilly Slowboy, for she deemed sitting in a cart on any terms, to be the highest point of human joy; the crowning circumstance of earthly hopes.
The Carrier having brought it from his stable and set it before him, they turned into the house. "You are not married before noon," he said, "I think?" "No," answered Tackleton. "Plenty of time. Plenty of time." When they entered the kitchen, Tilly Slowboy was rapping at the Stranger's door; which was only removed from it by a few steps.
Miss Slowboy, in the meantime, who had a mechanical power of reproducing scraps of current conversation for the delectation of the baby, with all the sense struck out of them, and all the nouns changed into the plural number, inquired aloud of that young creature, Was it Gruffs and Tackletons the toymakers then, and Would it call at Pastrycooks for wedding-cakes, and Did its mothers know the boxes when its fathers brought them home; and so on.
They were all about her in a moment. Caleb, who had been dozing on the cake-box, in the first imperfect recovery of his suspended presence of mind, seized Miss Slowboy by the hair of her head, but immediately apologised. "Mary!" exclaimed the Carrier, supporting her in his arms. "Are you ill? What is it? Tell me dear!"
She did her best, and though many of the parts were distasteful to her she got through them successfully, while now and then she had one which she thoroughly enjoyed. Her Tilly Slowboy was a hit, and a proud girl was Christie when Kent, the comedian, congratulated her on it, and told her he had seldom seen it better done.
Old Dot no sooner sees this, than up he is, all alive, whisks off Mrs. Dot in the middle of the dance, and is the foremost there. Caleb no sooner sees this, than he clutches Tilly Slowboy by both hands and goes off at score; Miss Slowboy, firm in the belief that diving hotly in among the other couples, and effecting any number of concussions with them, is your only principle of footing it.
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