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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1837. Excerpt:... verdict, they were less versatile; the visit of Jack Baltimore in his "one-horse chay," had stereotyped their protest against their young master's matrimonial alliance. Old Hardywood, accordingly, with whom his lady's will was absolute, was the only one of the household who chose to make the return of the offender an epoch of rejoicing. He invested himself in his yellow-white Marcella waistcoat, girded on his brown-black satin shorts, smoothed down his long white hair, and disposed his feelings for a holiday. But Simmons was sulky; the lame, deaf, and blind ladies of the bed-chamber and still-room put on afflicted faces, inverted the corners of their mouths, and shook their heads whenever Mrs. Armytage came in sight. They would not understand anything; and for all particulars of preparation connected with the expected guests, chose to demand a thousand unnecessary instructions. Smooth as was the course of hospitality at Holywell on all other occasions, and arbitrary as old Mrs. Caudlecup's distribution of its chambers and bills of fare, she chose to be told not only what rooms were to be appropriated to Master Arthur and his lady, but where Mrs. Arthur's maid was to sleep, and where the valet. She even took occasion to inquire whether the blue drawing-room was to be got ready as a morning-room for Mrs. Arthur, in case it should not be agreeable to her to breakfast with the family; and was as much puzzled what roast to provide for the second course, "now that game was out, and chickens and ducklings not yet fit for the spit," as if she had not been in the habit of meeting similar exigencies, every spring for her last fifty years of service. The head coachman, too, chose to understand that he had been ordered to take the set of bays to a post-town at fourt...