Page:Lady Anne Granard 3.pdf/117

Rh When Georgiana had taken what Mrs. Palmer called a hearty cry in her dining-parlour on their return, the good lady inquired "whether she thought it advisable to communicate the message to Lady Anne?" "Certainly," said Georgiana, "for mamma's appetite, which has been very capricious, has returned again; and it would be a great pity to deprive her, you know, of any thing she liked." Mr. Palmer was shortly afterwards announced to Lady Anne, and, after certain preliminaries, admitted. These only amounted to an adjustment of the cap and the shawl; madame had no occasion for rouge—her own was en peu trop. Lady Anne's good dinner had not arrived at the retributive period; she was in good spirits, glad to see her worthy neighbour, and take him by way of dessert, so far treating him as an orange that, wherever she could find an available reservoir of juice, she seized upon it without mercy, by no means unfrequently reminding him "that she had actually paid him the hundred and fifty pounds she borrowed of him, which, with her narrow means, was a great thing to have done, especially after the dreadful expences she had been impelled to incur at Brighton, both as regarded the fancy fair and the consequent illness. But she did not regret