Mrs Jamieson

“ However, we all sat eyes right, square front, gazing at the tantalising curtain, and hardly speaking intelligibly, we were so afraid of being caught in the vulgarity of making any noise in a place of public amusement. Mrs Jamieson was the most fortunate, for she fell asleep. ”

“ Great events spring out of small causes; so I will not pretend to say what induced Mrs Jamieson to alter her determination of excluding the Cranford ladies, and send notes of invitation all round for a small party on the following Tuesday. Mr Mulliner himself brought them round. He would always ignore the fact of there being a back door to any house, and gave a louder rat-tat than his mistress, Mrs Jamieson. ”

“ We whispered these fancies among ourselves in the evenings; but in the mornings our courage came back with the daylight, and in a week's time we had got over the shock of Carlo's death; all but Mrs Jamieson. She, poor thing, felt it as she had felt no event since her husband's death; indeed, Miss Pole said, that as the Honourable Mr Jamieson drank a good deal, and occasioned her much uneasiness, it was possible that Carlo's death might be the greater affliction. But there was always a tinge of cynicism in Miss Pole's remarks. ”

“ Mrs Jamieson’s house had really been attacked; at least there were men’s footsteps to be seen on the flower borders, underneath the kitchen windows, “where nae men should be;” and Carlo had barked all through the night as if strangers were abroad. Mrs Jamieson had been awakened by Lady Glenmire, and they had rung the bell which communicated with Mr Mulliner’s room in the third storey, and when his night-capped head had appeared over the bannisters, in answer to the summons, they had told him of their alarm, and the reasons for it ”

“ If she could neither eat nor sleep, she must be indeed out of spirits and out of health.
Lady Glenmire (who had evidently taken very kindly to Cranford) did not like the idea of Mrs Jamieson’s going to Cheltenham, and more than once insinuated pretty plainly that it was Mr Mulliner’s doing, who had been much alarmed on the occasion of the house being attacked, and since had said, more than once, that he felt it a very responsible charge to have to defend so many women. Be that as it might, Mrs Jamieson went to Cheltenham, escorted by Mr Mulliner ”

“ There was a young man who wore a bracelet on one wrist, a woman with a dry, scaly skin who slapped constantly at an imaginary fly on the bridge of her nose, and a child who brought decomposed starfish and bits of rotting seaweed into the dining room. And there was Madame Zilfa.
Jamieson noticed her particularly because she had the room next to his, and all day long people knocked at her door. She came down to breakfast the first morning of Jamieson's stay wearing an ankle-length frock of magenta-colored chiffon with sequins sewed all around the edge of the wide, wide skirt. ”

“ It was a pretty regular question from Mrs Jamieson, who had her own carriage in the coach- house, and always went out in a sedan-chair to the very shortest distances. The answers were nearly as much a matter of course.
"Oh dear, no! it is so pleasant and still at night!" "Such a refreshment after the excitement of a party!" "The stars are so beautiful!" This last was from Miss Matty.
"Are you fond of astronomy?" Lady Glenmire asked. ”

“ I can't think what he can be about." And Lady Glenmire at last grew quite impatient, but it was a pretty kind of impatience after all; and she rang the bell rather sharply, on receiving a half-permission from her sister-in-law to do so. Mr Mulliner appeared in dignified surprise. "Oh!" said Mrs Jamieson, "Lady Glenmire rang the bell; I believe it was for tea."
In a few minutes tea was brought. Very delicate was the china, very old the plate, very thin the bread and butter, and very small the lumps of sugar. Sugar was evidently Mrs Jamieson's favourite economy. ”

“ Then we brought ourselves down to earth and the present time by questioning each other (being all equally ignorant, and all equally without the slightest data to build any conclusions upon) as to when IT would take place? Where? How much a year Mr Hoggins had? Whether she would drop her title? And how Martha and the other correct servants in Cranford would ever be brought to announce a married couple as Lady Glenmire and Mr Hoggins? But would they be visited? Would Mrs Jamieson let us? Or must we choose between the Honourable Mrs Jamieson and the degraded Lady Glenmire? ”

“ We found out, in the course of the evening, that Lady Glenmire was going to pay Mrs Jamieson a long visit, as she had given up her apartments in Edinburgh, and had no ties to take her back there in a hurry. On the whole, we were rather glad to hear this, for she had made a pleasant impression upon us; and it was also very comfortable to find, from things which dropped out in the course of conversation, that, in addition to many other genteel qualities, she was far removed from the "vulgarity of wealth."
"Don't you find it very unpleasant walking?" ”

“ Jamieson painfully felt his disembodied condition. Even if he had been able to think of anything to say in his defense, he lacked a throat to say it with. But even in this dreadful moment he could not help observing that Madame Zilfa's neck was dirty and that her lipstick had been patchily applied.
"For your curiosity alone you deserve to be punished," the enchantress said. ”

“ They are our nearest neighbours, as they are also amongst our greatest friends, and the walk to their house is a distance that I am able to manage. I believe that our visits to the Jamiesons are most often determined by the state of the weather. If we have passed a long wet day indoors I feel that it is going to be a Jamieson day, and I know that my sister will say to me after tea, "Suppose we go over and see the Jamiesons;" and she generally adds that it is much better than settling down for the evening at five o'clock in the afternoon. ”

“ Perhaps the moral of this history (the man in the orange armchair said) is always to make reservations. He tried first at the Belmont-Pierre, a de luxe hostelry surrounded by twenty-seven acres of gardens, where he and Mrs. Jamieson had always stayed before. ”

“ Charlie Jamieson, who was almost like a brother in his relations with Eleanor, was hugely amused by this. Somehow cousins who are so intimate with a girl that they take a brother's place, never do seem able to understand that she may have the same attraction for other men that the sisters and the cousins of the other men have for them. The idea that their friends may fall in love with the girls they regard in such a perfectly matter-of-fact way strikes them, when it reaches them at all, as a huge joke. ”

“ Jenny goes indoors again, and Ruby can hear the clatter of plates and cups echoing across the quadrangle as she makes ready the early tea. The child’s eyes are dim with the glare at which she has so long been gazing, and her limbs, in their cramped position, are aching; but Ruby hardly seems to feel the discomfort from which those useful members suffer. She goes in to tea with a grudge, listens to her stepmother’s fretful little complaints with an absent air which shows how far away her heart is, and returns as soon as she may to her point of vantage. “Oh, me!” sighs the poor little girl. ”

“ Jamieson was a small farmer's daughter, and Captain Jamieson fell in love with her when, having left the army, he went to learn practical farming at old Higgins's, and he loved her faithfully to the day of his death. She is a stout, elderly woman who speaks very little, but upon whom an immense amount of affection seems to be lavished by her family of five daughters and two sons. And it has sometimes seemed to my sister and me that her good qualities are of a lasting and passive sort, which exist in large measure in the hearts of those who bestow this boundless affection. ”

“ As the two men closed the door between them and the two so strangely different women, Brierly laid a hand upon the detective's shoulder.
"Ferrars," he said, "what did Ruth mean? Who is that terrible woman? And how is she concerned in your story? It is time I should know the truth."
"Quite time. That woman is Mrs. Jamieson, or the person you knew under that name. She is cleverly disguised, but I expected some such trick. She went to 'the States' to rid herself of you and your brother; and she took that man, who is really her own brother, and who tried to kill you, as her fellow criminal." ”

“ She’s the nicest girl I ever saw or dreamed of seeing.”
“Oh, she’s all of that,” agreed Dolly, loyally. “You can’t tell me anything nice about Miss Eleanor that I haven’t found out for myself long ago. But Mr. Jamieson isn’t in love with her–and he’s known her much longer than Mr. Trenwith has.”
“That hasn’t got anything at all to do with it,” declared Bessie. “People don’t have to know one another a long time to fall in love–though sometimes they don’t always know about it themselves right away. And, besides, I think she and Mr. Jamieson are just like brother and sister. ”

“ From Glengarry they can watch far away the flames, like so many forked and lurid tongues of fire, leaping up into the still air and looking strangely out of place against the hazy blue of the summer sky. The little girl leaves her almost untouched dinner, and steals out to the verandah, where she sits, a forlorn-looking little figure, in the glare of the afternoon sunshine, with her knees drawn up to her chin, and her brown eyes following eagerly the pathway by the river where she has ridden with Dick no later than this morning. This morning!—to waiting Ruby it seems more like a century ago. ”

“ The Jamiesons, who trace every variation in life to a love affair, are not long of course in coming to the right and the sentimental—nay, from the Jamieson point of view, the only reasonable explanation of this change in their little cousin. ”

“ From the porch they watched him walk off down the street. He carried himself like the athlete he was, and his broad shoulders and fine, free stride were those of a man who inspires confidence and trust, even in those who only see his back.
"Look!" said Zara, suddenly. "Why is Jake Hoover going down that way? And isn't he acting queerly?"
"Why, I believe he's following Mr. Jamieson!" said Bessie. "See, he keeps getting behind trees [35] and things, and he's staying on the other side of the street. Whenever Mr. Jamieson turns, Jake hides himself."
Eleanor frowned thoughtfully. ”

“ But that lawyer of his, Isaac Brack, who is so mean and crooked that no one in the city will have anything to do with him except the criminals, Mr. Jamieson says, told me once that unless I went with him I’d never find out the truth about my father and mother and what became of them.”
“Oh, Bessie, how exciting! You never told me that before. Have you told Mr. Jamieson?” ”

“ Even Frances Taylor went north to stay with Mrs. Macdonald, and the Reading Society postponed its future meetings till the winter should come again.
Undoubtedly Kate Jamieson's wedding was a stirring event in a very dull time. The festivities connected with it were carried out with the Jamiesons' usual energy and lavishness. It is possible to be lavish on five hundred a year. That is one of the pleasing things that kind-hearted people like the Jamiesons can prove. No one was omitted in the list of invitations to the reception which was held on the lawn in front of the house. ”

“ The “station” is built in a quadrangle, and across one corner of this quadrangle Ruby has to go ere she reaches the kitchen. If it is hot in the living room, it is ten times hotter here, where Jenny, a stout, buxom Scotchwoman of forty or thereabouts, who for love of her mistress has braved the loneliness of bush life, is busy amidst her pots and pans getting ready the Christmas dinner.
“Dad’s not come yet, Jenny,” Ruby says as she reaches down a tumbler and prepares the cooling drink which her step-mother has requested. ”

“ You have all eternity before you. On your way, then, on your way!" And with a rush and a thump, Jamieson was back inside his body again.
Since then, gentlemen, (the man in the armchair stretched out his legs and sighed) poor old Jamieson has been pretty much on the go. He's been twice to Africa, hunting basuto wood, and once to the Mountains of the Moon, after the moon grapes. The second time in Africa he had filarial fever and thought he was going to die, but he didn't.
That's the funny thing about Jamieson—there's always money in his pockets, and he can't seem to die. ”

“ He employs eight salesmen in his retail shop, five cutters, and over one hundred and fifty operative tailors. In politics, Mr. Jamieson, like the majority of the intelligent Scotch in Canada, is a hard-working and enthusiastic Reformer, and does not hesitate when the occasion calls for it to spend both time and money for party purposes. In religion he is an adherent of the Presbyterian church. On the 11th of March, 1873, he was married to Dorcas Wilson Menzies, daughter of William Menzies, of Edinburgh, and has a family of six children, four girls and two boys. ”

“ An intelligent antiquary, an elegant scholar, and a respectable writer of verses, Robert Jamieson was born in Morayshire about the year 1780. At an early age he became classical assistant in the school of Macclesfield in Cheshire. About the year 1800 he proceeded to the shores of the Baltic, to occupy an appointment in the Academy of Riga. Prior to his departure, he had formed the scheme of publishing a collection of ballads recovered from tradition, and on his return to Scotland he resumed his plan with the ardour of an enthusiast. ”