Page:Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Volume 2.djvu/68

50 the odor of my vinaigrette. It will compose your lacerated nerves, my angel."

But the angel wouldn't come, and continued to dance and swear, and slap his hat about until the damages were repaired, when he flung himself, exhausted, into the carriage, and was borne away to his bride.

"A lively prospect for poor Pelagie." "What a little fiend he is!" "Spinsters for ever!"

With these remarks, the ladies ordered their own equipage, an infant omnibus, much in vogue in Dinan, where retired army oflicers, English or Scotch, drive about with their little families of eighteen or twenty. One Colonel Newcome, a grave-looking man, used to come to church in a bus of this sort, with nine daughters and four sons, like a patriarch. The strangers thought it was a boarding-school, till he presented the entire flock, with paternal pride, as "my treasures."

Madame C, in a large Leghorn bonnet, trembling with yellow bows, led the way with an air of lofty indifference as to what became of her house that day. Marie bore a big basket, full of cold fowls, salad, and wines; she also was in a new, spring hat