Still I was daily turned out, and though nobody called him in, he was to
be seen, sitting very forward, apparently looking over notes supposed
to have been taken after numerous critical cases and eventful
consultations. Our own case was hopeless, our progress was arrested,
an execution was in the house, servants met with their deserts and were
turned off, goods were seized, my master was knocked up, and I was
knocked down for one hundred and twenty pounds.
Again my beauties blushed for a while unseen; but I was new painted,
and, like some other painted personages, looked, at a distance, almost
as good as new. Fortunately for me, an elderly country curate, just at
this period, was presented with a living, and the new incumbent thought
it incumbent upon him to present his fat lady and his thin daughter with
a leathern convenience. My life was now a rural one, and for ten long
years nothing worth recording happened to me. Slowly and surely did I
creep along green lanes, carried the respectable trio to snug, early,
neighbourly dinners, and was always under lock and key before twelve
o'clock. It must be owned I began to have rather an old-fashioned look;
my body was ridiculously small, and the rector's thin daughter, the
bodkin, or rather packing-needle of the party, sat more forward, and on
a smaller space than bodkins do now-a-days.
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