The elegant travelling carriage which bore Miss Wychwood from her birthplace, on the border of Somerset and Wilstshire, to her home in Bath, proceeded on its way at a decorous pace. This was dictated by her coachman, an elderly autocrat, who, having known her from the day of her birth, almost thirty years before, drove her at the pace he considered proper, and turned a deaf ear to her requests to him to put 'em along! If she didn't know what was due to her consequence, as Miss Wychwood of Twynham Park, he did; and even if she was an old maid -- in fact, almost an ape-leader, though he would never call her one, and had turned off the impudent stable-boy who dared to do so, after giving him a rare box on the ear -- he knew very well how his late master would have wished his only daughter to be driven about the country.
from A Lady of Quality, by Georgette Heyer
{Our library just added a stash of Heyers to its e-book collection, and after finally reading her for the first time last August, I'm indulging in a little light late-summer reading.}
{image from Jane Austen in Vermont}
1 comment:
Charming! At 30 you were finished in Regency England!
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