Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/318

 women squatted around her, the midwife supporting her back, and the child lying by her, covered with a corner of the quilt. Fatôom, very yellow, looked as if she had been in a great fright, and was astonished there was so little in it. After feeling her pulse, and delivering to her mother a basket of good things, such as lump sugar, six or eight sorts of spices, &c., with which it is customary to make the caudle upon these occasions, as also a new counterpane, and two silk pillows, for her lying-in present, I took a glance at the village gossips. There they were, holding forth much in the same way as the peasantry in other countries, with this difference, that here my presence was no restraint, and the minutest details of the recent event were discussed with as little reserve as if they had been talking of the ordinary incidents of the day.

Having returned to Lady Hester with an account of what I had seen, she immediately set about casting the infant's nativity, first ascertaining accurately the hour at which he was born—a quarter before two. "He will have," said she, "arched eyebrows, rolling eyes, and a nose so and so: he will be a devil, violent in his passions, but soon pacified: his fingers will be long and taper, without being skinny and bony:" and thus she went on, in a manner so impressed with faith and earnestness, that it is not to be wondered at how persons of good judgment have lent their ears to