ladyship; and I hope Mr Horner will not be too impatient with me at first. You know, perhaps, that I was nearly being an authoress once, and that seems as if I was destined to ‘employ my time in writing.’”
“No, indeed; we must return to the subject of the clerkship afterwards, if you please. An authoress, Miss Galindo! You surprise me!”
“But, indeed, I was. All was quite ready. Doctor Burney used to teach me music: not that I ever could learn, but it was a fancy of my poor father’s. And his daughter wrote a book, and they said she was but a very young lady, and nothing but a music master’s daughter; so why should not I try?”
“Well?”
“Well! I got paper and half a hundred good pens, a bottle of ink, all ready –”
“And then –”
“O, it ended in my having nothing to say, when I sat down to write. But sometimes, when I get hold of a book, I wonder why I let such a poor reason stop me. It does not others.”
“But I think it was very well it did, Miss Galindo,” said her ladyship. “I am extremely against women usurping men’s employments, as they are very apt to do. But perhaps, after all, the notion of writing a book improved your hand. It is one of the most legible I ever saw.”
“I despise z’s without tails,” said Miss Galindo, with a good deal of gratified pride at my lady’s praise. Presently, my lady took her to look at a curious old cabinet, which Lord Ludlow had picked up at the Hague; and while they were out of the room on this errand, I suppose the question of remuneration was settled, for I heard no more of it.
When they came back, they were talking of Mr Gray. Miss Galindo was unsparing in her expressions of opinion about him: going much farther than my lady – in her language, at least.
“A little blushing man like him, who can’t say bo to a goose without hesitating and colouring, to come to this village – which is as good a village as ever lived – and cry us down for a set of sinners, as if we had all committed murder and that other thing! – I have no patience with him, my lady. And then, how is he to help us to heaven, by teaching us our a b, ab – b a, ba? And yet, by all accounts, that’s to save poor children’s souls. O, I knew your ladyship would agree with me. I am sure my mother was as good a creature as ever breathed the blessed air; and if she’s not gone to heaven I don’t want to go there; and she could not spell a letter decently. And does Mr Gray think God took note of that?”
“I was sure you would agree with me, Miss Galindo,” said my lady. “You and I can remember how this talk about education – Rousseau, and his writings – stirred up the French people to their Reign of Terror, and all those bloody scenes.”
“I’m afraid that Rousseau and Mr Gray are birds of a feather,” replied Miss Galindo, shaking her head. “And yet there is some good in the young man too. He sat up all night with Billy Davis, when his wife was fairly worn out with nursing him.”
“Did he, indeed!” said my lady, her face lighting up, as it always did when she heard of any kind or generous action, no matter who performed it. “What a pity he is bitten with these new revolutionary ideas, and is so much for disturbing the established order of society!”
When Miss Galindo went, she left so favourable an impression of her visit on my lady, that she said to me with a pleased smile –
“I think I have provided Mr Horner with a far better clerk than he would have made of that lad Gregson in twenty years. And I will send the lad to my lord’s grieve, in Scotland, that he may be kept out of harm’s way.”
But something happened to the lad before this purpose could be accomplished.
Chapter 10
The next morning, Miss Galindo made her appearance, and, by some mistake, unusual to my lady’s well trained servants, was shown into the room where I was trying to walk; for a certain amount of exercise was prescribed for me, painful although the exertion had become.
She brought a little basket along with her and while the footman was gone to inquire my lady’s wishes (for I don’t think that Lady Ludlow expected Miss Galindo so soon to assume her clerkship; nor, indeed, had Mr Horner any work of any kind ready for his new assistant to do), she launched out into conversation with me.
“It was a sudden summons, my dear! However, as I have often said to myself, ever since an occasion long ago, if Lady Ludlow ever honours me by asking for my right hand, I’ll cut it off, and wrap the stump up so tidily she shall never find out it bleeds. But, if I had had a little more time, I could have mended my pens better. You see, I have had to sit up pretty late to get these sleeves made” – and she took out of her basket a pail of brown-holland oversleeves, very much such as a grocer’s apprentice wears – “and I had only time to make seven or eight pens, out of some quills Farmer Thomson gave me last autumn. As for ink, I’m thankful to say, that’s always ready; an ounce of steel filings, an ounce of nut gall, and a pint of water (tea, if you’re extravagant, which, thank Heaven! I’m not), put all in a bottle, and hang it up behind the house door, so that the whole gets a good shaking every time you slam it to – and even if you are in a passion and bang it, as Sally and I often do, it is all the better for it – and there’s my ink ready for use; ready to write my lady’s will with, if need be.”
“O, Miss Galindo!” said I, “don’t talk so; my lady’s will! and she not dead yet.”
“And if she were, what would be the use of talking of making her will? Now, if you were Sally, I should say, ‘Answer me that, you goose!’ But, as you’re a relation of my lady’s, I must be civil, and only say, ‘I can’t think how you can talk so like a fool!’ To be sure, poor thing, you’re lame!”
I do not know how long she would have gone on; but my lady came in, and I, released from my duty of entertaining Miss Galindo, made my limping way into the next room. To tell the truth, I was rather afraid of Miss Galindo’s tongue, for I never knew what she would say next.
After a while my lady came, and began to look in the bureau for something: and as she looked she said – “I think Mr Horner must have made some mistake, when he said he had so much work that he almost required a clerk, for this morning he cannot find anything for Miss Galindo to do; and there she is, sitting with her pen behind her ear, waiting for something to write. I am come to find her my mother’s letters, for I should like to have a fair copy made of them. O, here they are: don’t trouble yourself, my dear child.”
When my lady returned again, she sat down and began to talk of Mr Gray.
“Miss Galindo says she saw him going to hold a prayer meeting in a cottage. Now that really makes me unhappy, it is so like what Mr Wesley used to do in my younger days; and since then we have had rebellion in the American colonies and the French Revolution. You may depend upon it, my dear, making religion and education common – vulgarising them, as it were – is a bad thing for a nation. A man who hears prayers read in the cottage where he has just supped on bread and bacon, forgets the respect due to a church: he begins to think that one place is as good as another, and, by-and-by, that one person is as good as another; and after that, I always find that people begin to talk of their rights, instead of thinking of their duties. I wish Mr Gray had been more tractable, and had left well alone. What do you think I heard this morning? Why that the Home Hill estate, which niches into
