rump-ends of their tails, whilst a couple of lay-sisters were busied, the one in darning the lining, and the other in sewing on the shreads of yellow binding, which the teeth of time had unravelled⸺the under-gardener dress’d the muleteer’s hat in hot wine-lees⸺and a tailor sat musically at it, in a shed over-against the convent, in assorting four dozen of bells for the harness, whistling to each bell, as he tied it on with a thong.⸺
⸺The carpenter and the smith of Andoüillets held a council of wheels; and by seven, the morning after, all look’d spruce, and was ready at the gate of the convent for the hot-baths of Bourbon —two rows of the unfortunate stood ready there an hour before.
The abbess of Andoüillets , supported by Margarita the novice, advanced slowly to the calesh, both clad in white, with their black rosaries hanging at their breasts⸺
⸺There was a simple solemnity in the contrast: they entered the calesh; and nuns in the same uniform, sweet emblem of innocence, each occupied a window, and as the abbess and Margarita look’d up—each (the sciatical poor nun excepted)—each stream’d out the end of her veil in the air—then kiss’d the lilly hand which let it go: the good abbess and Margarita laid their hands saint-wise upon their breasts—look’d up to heaven—then to them—and look’d “God bless you, dear sisters.”
I declare I am interested in this story, and wish I had been there.
The gardener, whom I shall now call the muleteer, was a little, hearty, broad-set, good-natured, chattering, toping kind of a fellow, who troubled his head very little with the hows and whens of life; so had mortgaged a month of his conventical wages in a borrachio, or leathern cask of wine, which he had disposed behind the calesh, with a large russet-coloured riding-coat over it, to guard it from the sun; and as the weather was hot, and he not a niggard of his labours, walking ten times