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[54]
to revisit Naples.
“Ah, sir,” replied the old man, “my father is dead!”
Our mother loved to linger over these old-time figures.
The name of Billy Bottomore always brought a twinkle to her eye, and we never tired of hearing how he told her, “There is a single sister in Newport, a sempstress, to whom I have offered matrimony, but she says, ‘No.’
” The single sister finally yielded (perhaps when Billy inherited old Corne's money) and he became a proud and happy husband.
“She keeps my house as neat as a nunnery!”
he said.
“When Miss E., the housekeeper, died, she nursed her and laid her out, and when Father Corne died, she nursed him and laid him out--”
“Yes, Billy,” broke in our Aunt Annie, “and she'll lay you out too!” --which in due time she did.
He congratulated Julia on having girl-children only.
“Give me daughters!”
he cried.
“As my good old Spanish grandfather used to say, give me daughters!”
“Of this Spanish ancestor,” our mother says, “no one ever heard before.
His descendant died, without daughter or son, of cholera in 185-.”
We forget the name of another quaint personage, a retired sea-captain, who once gave a party to which she was allowed to go; but she remembered the party, and the unction with which the kindly host, rubbing his hands over the supper table, exclaimed: “Now, ladies and gentlemen, help yourselves sang froidy!”
The roses and gooseberry bushes of the Newport garden once witnessed a serio-comic scene.
There was another sea-captain, Glover by name, who had business
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York. 1916.
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