Sunday, and so on through the year: all made from good old Church
receipts, handed down from one of my lady's earliest Protestant
ancestresses. Every one of us passed a portion of the day with Lady
Ludlow; and now and then we rode out with her in her coach and four. She
did not like to go out with a pair of horses, considering this rather
beneath her rank; and, indeed, four horses were very often needed to pull
her heavy coach through the stiff mud. But it was rather a cumbersome
equipage through the narrow Warwickshire lanes; and I used often to think
it was well that countesses were not plentiful, or else we might have met
another lady of quality in another coach and four, where there would have
been no possibility of turning, or passing each other, and very little
chance of backing. Once when the idea of this danger of meeting another
countess in a narrow, deep-rutted lane was very prominent in my mind I
ventured to ask Mrs. Medlicott what would have to be done on such an
occasion; and she told me that "de latest creation must back, for sure,"
which puzzled me a good deal at the time, although I understand it now. I
began to find out the use of the "Peerage," a book which had seemed to me
rather dull before; but, as I was always a coward in a coach, I made
myself well acquainted with the dates of creation of our three
Warwickshire earls, and was happy to find that Earl Ludlow ranked second,
the oldest earl being a hunting widower, and not likely to drive out in a
carriage.

All this time I have wandered from Mr. Gray. Of course, we first saw him
in church when he read himself in. He was very red-faced, the kind of
redness which goes with light hair and a blushing complexion; he looked
slight and short, and his bright light frizzy hair had hardly a dash of
powder in it. I remember my lady making this observation, and sighing
over it; for, though since the famine in seventeen hundred and ninety-
nine and eighteen hundred there had been a tax on hair-powder, yet it was