Shanty the Blacksmith | Page 2

house for her brother, the late
laird, that the neighbours said she had half-starved herself, in order to
keep up some little show of old hospitality. In truth, the poor lady was
marvellously thin, and as sallow and gaunt as she was thin. Some old
lady who had stood for her at the font, in the reign of Charles the
Second, had, at her death, left her all her clothes, and these had been
sent to Dymock's tower in several large chests. Mrs. Margaret was
accordingly provided for, for life, with the addition of a little homespun
linen, and stockings of her own knitting; but, as she held it a mighty
piece of extravagance to alter a handsome dress, she wore her
godmother's clothes in the fashion in which she found them, and prided
herself not a little in having silks for every season of the year. Large
hoops were worn in those days, and long ruffles, and sacks short and
long, and stomachers, and hoods, and sundry other conceits, now never
thought of; but Mrs. Margaret thought that all these things had a
genteel appearance, and showed that those who bought them and those
who inherited them had not come of nothing.
Mrs. Margaret, however, never put any of these fine things on, till she
had performed her household duties, looked into every hole and corner
in the offices, overlooked the stores, visited the larder, scullery and
hen-yard, weighed what her three maids had spun the day before,
skimmed the milk with her own hands, gathered up the candle ends,
and cut the cabbage for the brose; all which being done, and the
servants' dinner seen to, and it must be confessed, it was seldom that
they had a very sumptuous regale, she dressed herself as a lady should
be dressed, and sate down to her darning, which was her principal work,
in the oval window in the chief room in the castle. Darning, we say,
was her principal work, because there was scarcely an article in the
house which she did not darn occasionally, from the floor-cloth to her
own best laces, and, as money was seldom forthcoming for renewing
any of the finer articles in the house capable of being darned, no one
can say what would have been the consequence, if Mrs. Margaret had

been divested of this darning propensity.
How the old lady subsisted herself is hardly known, for it often
happened that the dinner she contrived for her nephew, was barely
sufficient for him, and although on these occasions she always
managed to seem to be eating, yet had Mr. Dymock had his eyes about
him, he could not but have seen that she must often have risen from the
table, after having known little more than the odour of the viands.
Nothing, however, which has been said of Mrs. Margaret Dymock goes
against that which might be said with truth, that there was a fund of
kindness in the heart of the venerable spinster, though it was sometimes
choked up and counteracted by her desire to make a greater appearance
than the family means would allow.
Besides the three maids in the kitchen, there were a man and a boy
without doors, two or three lean cows, a flock of sheep which were half
starved on the moor, a great dog, and sundry pigs and fowls living at
large about the tower; and, to crown our description, it must be added,
that all the domestic arrangements which were beyond the sphere of
Mrs. Margaret were as ill managed as those within her sphere were
capitally well conducted; however, as Mr. Dymock said to her one day
when she ventured to expostulate with him on this subject, "Only have
a little patience, my good aunt, when I have completed what I am now
about, for instance my plough, you will see how I will arrange every
thing. I cannot suffer these petty attentions and petty reforms to occupy
me just now; what I intend to do will be done in a large way; I mean
not only to repair but to restore the castle, to throw the whole of my
lands to the north into a sheep-walk, to plant the higher points, and to
convert the south lands into arable. But my first object is the plough,
and that must be attended to, before everything else; the wood-work is
all complete, but a little alteration must be made in the coulter, and
after all, I apprehend I must do it myself, as old Shanty is as stupid as
his own hammer."
Mrs. Margaret hinted that every man had not the ingenuity of her
nephew; adding, however, that old Shanty was as worthy and
God-fearing a man as any on the moor.

"I do not deny it,"