it might be surmised from such declarations, that she was incapable of personal locomotion, through some original infirmity, for instance, such as results from the rickets; whereas, so far from allowing any deficiency on the part of her nurse or parents, in putting her to her feet, miss norman professed to have the perfect command of all her limbs, and would have felt extremely offended at a hint that she could not dance. it was quite another weakness than any bodily one which restricted her promenades, and made her feet almost as useless to her as

[pg 240]

those of the female chinese. pride was in fault; and partly her surname, for suggesting to one of her ancestors that he was a descendant of william the first of england: a notion, which, after turning his own head, had slightly crazed those of his successors, who all believed, as part and parcel of their inheritance, on the strength of the “norman” and some dubious old pedigree, that the conqueror was their great progenitor.

the hereditary arrogance engendered by this imaginary distinction, had successively displayed itself by outbreaks of different character, according to the temperament of the individual who happened to be head of the family: with miss norman, the last of her line, it took the form of a boast that every branch and twig of her illustrious tree had always ridden “in their own carriage.” i am not quite sure whether she did not push this pretension further back than the date of the invention of “little houses on wheels” would warrant; however, it held good, in local tradition, for several generations, although the family vehicle had gradually dwindled down from an ample coach to a chariot, a fly, and, finally, the one-inside sedan-chair upon wheels, which the sudden death of plantagenet left planted fifty yards short of the binn gate. to glance at the whole set-out, nobody would ever have attributed high birth and inherent gentility to its owner. ’twas never of a piece. for once that the body was new-painted, the arms were thrice refreshed and touched up, till the dingy vehicle, by the glaring comparison, looked more ancient than the quarterings. the crest was much oftener renewed than the hammer-cloth; and humphrey, the coachman, evidently never got a new suit all at once. he had always old drab to bran-new bright sky-blue plush; or vice versâ. sometimes a hat in its first gloss got the better of its old tarnished band; sometimes the fresh gold lace made the brown beaver look still more an antique. the same with the harness and the horse, which was sometimes a tall spanking

[pg 241]

brute, who seemed to have outgrown the concern; at other times, a short pony-like animal, who had been put into the shafts by mistake. in short, the several articles seemed to belong the more especially to miss norman because they belonged so little to each other. a few minutes made a great change in her possessions, instead of a living horse, hight plantagenet, she was proprietor of certain hundred-weights of dogs’-meat.