Penelope, Volume I by William Pitt Scargill

Mr Primrose on the following morning set off for London in a post-chaise, being unwilling to risk his neck a second time in a stage-coach; for he had taken it into his head that a stage-coach must be overturned at the bottom of a steep hill. He travelled alone; and we will for the present leave him alone; though it might be very entertaining to observe how pettishly he brooked the tediousness of that mode of travelling, and how teasing he was to the post-boys, sometimes urging them to drive fast, and then rebuking them for using their horses so cruelly. What the poor man could find to amuse himself with for the long journey, which occupied him nearly three days, we cannot tell. In the meantime, we find it necessary to return to that part of our narrative in which we related that the partial exhibition to which Penelope had been exposed at the Countess of Smatterton's select little party, had produced an almost serious illness.

Nothing could exceed the kind attentions of the Countess. Every hour was she making enquiries, and all that could possibly be said or done by way of alleviation or consolation did her ladyship say and do for her heart-broken patient. It never for one single moment entered the mind of Lady Smatterton that Miss Primrose could feel the slightest repugnance in the world to the profession which had been chosen for her; nor could her ladyship think that any sorrow or deep feeling was on the mind of Penelope for the death of her uncle, or that there was any harassing anxiety on her spirits at the thought of her father's probable arrival in England. The Countess of Smatterton might have been a woman of very great feeling; but, from difference of situation, she could not by any means sympathize with Penelope. There is an infinite difference between five hundred acquaintances and an only dear friend. The pleasures of Penelope were not of the same nature as those of the Countess of Smatterton, nor was there much similarity in their pains.