CHAPTER XXIX.
SHOWING HOW POOR MRS. MACNAMARA WAS TROUBLED AND HAUNTED TOO, AND
OPENING A BUDGET OF GOSSIP.
Some score pages back, when we were all assembled at the King's House, my reader, perhaps, may not have missed our fat and consequential, but on the whole, good-natured acquaintance, Mrs. Macnamara; though, now I remember, he did overhear the gentle Magnolia, in that little colloquy in which she and Aunt Becky exchanged compliments, say, in substance, that she hoped that amiable parent might be better next day. She was not there, she was not well. Of late Mrs. Macnamara had lost all her pluck, and half her colour, and some even of her fat. She was like one of those portly dowagers in Numbernip's select society of metamorphosed turnips, who suddenly exhibited sympathetic symptoms of failure, grew yellow, flabby, and wrinkled, as the parent bulb withered and went out of season. You would not have known her for the same woman.
A tall, pale female, dressed in black satin and a black velvet riding
hood, had made her two visits in a hackney-coach; but whether these had
any connexion with the melancholy change referred to, I don't, at this
moment, say. I know that they had a very serious bearing upon after
events affecting persons who figure in this true history. Whatever her
grief was she could not bring herself to tell it. And so her damask
cheek, and portly form, and rollicking animal spirits continued to
suffer.
The major found that her mind wandered at piquet. Toole also caught her
thinking of something else in the midst of his best bits of local
scandal; and Magnolia several times popped in upon her large mother in
tears. Once or twice Toole thought, and he was right, that she was on
the point of making a disclosure. But her heart failed her, and it came
to nothing. The little fellow's curiosity was on fire. In his philosophy
there was more in everything than met the eye, and he would not believe
Magnolia, who laughed at him, that she did not know all about it.
On this present morning poor Mrs. Macnamara had received a note, at
which she grew pale as the large pat of butter before her, and she felt
quite sick as she thrust the paper into her pocket, and tried to smile
across the breakfast table at Magnolia, who was rattling away as usual, and the old major who was chuckling at her impudent mischief over his buttered toast and tea.
'Why, mother dear,' cried Mag suddenly, 'what the plague ails your
pretty face? Did you ever see the like? It's for all the world like a
bad batter pudding! I lay a crown, now, that was a bill. Was it a bill? Come now, Mullikins (a term of endearment for mother). Show us the note. It is too bad, you poor dear, old, handsome, bothered angel, you should be fretted and tormented out of your looks and your health, by them dirty shopkeepers' bills, when a five-pound note, I'm certain sure, 'id pay every mothers skin o' them, and change to spare!' And the elegant Magnolia, whose soiclainet and Norwich crape petticoat were unpaid for, darted a glance of reproach full upon the major's powdered head, the top of which was cleverly presented to receive it, as he swallowed in haste his cup of tea, and rising suddenly, for his purse had lately suffered in the service of the ladies, and wanted rest—
'Tis nothing at all but that confounded egg,' he said, raising that
untasted delicacy a little towards his nose. 'Why the divil will you go
on buying our eggs from that dirty old sinner, Poll Delany?' And he
dropped it from its cup plump into the slop-basin.
'A then maybe it was,' said poor Mrs. Mac, smiling as well as she could; 'but I'm better.'
'No you're not, Mullikins,' interposed Magnolia impatiently. 'There's
Toole crossing the street, will I call him up?'
'Not for the world, Maggy darling. I'd have to pay him, and where's the
money to come from?'
The major did not hear, and was coughing besides; and recollecting that
he had a word for the adjutant's ear, took his sword off the peg where
it hung, and his cocked hat, and vanished in a twinkling.
'Pay Toole, indeed! nonsense, mother,' and up went the window.
'Good-morrow to your nightcap, doctor!'
'And the top of the morning to you, my pretty Miss chattering Mag, up on
your perch there,' responded the physician.