She
was Irish, he Scotch; she about seventy years of age, he under fifty; she
ruddy, healthy, hearty, good-looking; he, pale, nervous, shy, retiring.
But on the last Thursday of each month he was quite another man. On that
day he went to Glasgow to collect the rents of some small houses he
owned; and generally came home rather "fou" and hilarious, when the old
lady would take him in hand, and put him to bed.
They had an only child, a son, a grown up man, an uncouth ill-looking
ungainly fellow, who did no work, smoked and loafed about, but was the
idol of his mother. He resembled neither parent in the least, and,
except that such vagaries of nature are not unknown, it might have been
supposed that some cuckoo had visited the parental nest.
A gaunt, hard-featured domestic completed this interesting family, and
she was uncommon too. By no means young, what Balzac calls "a woman of
canonical age," she resembled Pere Grandet's tall Nanon. Like Nanon, she
had been the devoted servant of the family for nearly a quarter of a
century, and like her, had no interest outside that of her master and
mistress.
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