276 Old Neighbours. [Sepr. 
shone; or the sun did not shine (either reason would serve—her laziness 
was much indebted to that bright luminary) ; or somebody had:called; or 
somebody might call; or (and this I believe was the excuse that! she 
most commonly made’ to herself) she had not time’ to walk°on"ac- 
count of her knitting, she wanted to get on with thate¢°"" | arian 
» The only time that I ever saw her equipped in out-of-door-costume 
was one unexceptionable morning in April, when the sun, the’wind) the 
sky and the earth, were all as bright, and sweet, and balmy, ‘as if they 
had put'themselvesin order on purpose to receive an unaccustomed visitor. 
I met her just as she was issuing slowly from the parlour, and enchanted 
at my good fortune, entreated, with equal truth and politeness, that I 
might not keep her within. She entered into no contest of civility’; but 
returned with far more than her usual alacrity into the parlour, rung 
the bell for her maid, sate down on her dear sofa, and was forthwith 
unclogged, unshawled and unbonneted, semingly as much rejoiced at 
the respite, as a school-boy reprieved from the rod, or a thief from the 
gallows. I never saw such an expression of relief, of escape from a great 
evil, on any human countenance. It would have been quite barbarous 
to have pressed her to take her intended walk: and, moreover, it would 
have been altogether useless. She had satisfied her conscience with the 
attempt, and was now set in to her beloved knitting in contented 
obstinacy. The whole world would not have moved her from that sofa. 
She did however exchange evening visits, in a quiet melancholy way, 
with two or three ladies her near neighbours, to whose houses she was 
carried in the stately ease of a sedan-chair ;—for in those days fives were 
not; at which times the knitting was replaced by cassino. Those visits 
were, if not altogether so silent, yet,very nearly as dull as the inflictions 
of the morning; her companions (if companions they may ‘be called) 
being for the most part persons of her own calibre, although somewhat 
more loquacious. They had a beau or two belonging to this West 
Street coterie, which even beaux failed to enliven ;a powdered physician, 
rather pompous ; a bald curate, very prim, and a simpering semi-bald 
apothecary, who brushed a few straggling locks up to the top of his 
crown and tried to make them pass for a head of hair ; he was by far the 
most gallant man of the party, and amongst them might almost be 
reckoned amusing. 
So passed the two first years of Mrs. Allen’s residence in W. The 
third brought her a guest. whose presence was felt as a relief by every 
body, perhaps the only woman who could have kept her company con- 
stantly, to the equal satisfaction of both parties. 
Miss Dale was the daughter of a deceased officer, with a small inde- 
pendence, who boarded in the winter in Charter-House Square, and 
passed her summer in visiting her friends. She was what is called a 
genteel little woman, of an age that seemed to vary with the light and the 
hour ; oldish in the morning, in the evening almost young, always very 
smartly dressed, very good-humoured, and very lively. Her ‘spirits 
were really astonishing ; how she could not only appear gay, but be' gay 
in such an atmosphere of dulness, still puzzles me to think of: \ There 
was no French blood either, which might have accounted for the phe- 
nomenon ; her paternal grandfather having been in’ his time high sheriff 
for the county of Notts; a genuine English country gentleman—and her 
mother, strange to relate, a renegado quakeress, expelled from the 
Society of Friends for the misdemeanour of espousing an officer... Some 
