Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE CHARACTER. ' I would give ten thousand pounds for a character." Colonel Chartres. " If you plea.;e, Ma'am," said Betty, wiping her steaming arms on her apron as she entered the room, — "if you please, Ma'am, here's the lady for the character." Mrs. Dowdum immediately jumped up from her chair, and with a little run, no faster than a walk, proceeded from the window to the fireplace, and consulted an old-fashioned watch which stood on the mantel-shelf. " Bless me! it is twelve o'clock, sure enough ! " Now, considering that the visit was hy appointment, and had been expected for the last hour, it will be thought remarkable that Mrs. Dowdum should be so apparently unprepared ; but persons who move in the higher circles within the vortex of what is called a perpetual round of pleasure, where visits, welcome or unwelcome, circulate with proportionate rapidity, can hardly estimate the importance of an interview in those lower spheres which, comparatively, scarcely revolve at all. Thus for the last hour Mrs. Dowdum had been looking for the promised call, a.ul listening with all her might for the sound of the knocker; and yet when it did come, she was as much flurried as people commonly are by what is denominated a drop in. Accordingly, after consulting the watch, she found it necessary to refer to the looking-glass which hung above it, and to make an extempore toilet First, she laid hold of her cap with both hands, and gave it — her flaxen wig following the impulse — what sailors term a half turn to the right, after which she repeated the same manrenvre towards the left; and then, as if by this operation she had discovered the juste milieu, she left matters as they were. Her shawl was next treated in the same fashion, first being lapped over one way, and then lapped o...