Lucy found in a garret a chest containing a quantity of papers and
parchments, and the beautifulest dust. No such dust is made in these
degenerate days. Some of these MSS. bore recent dates, and were easily
legible, though not so easily intelligible, being written as Gratiano
spake.* The writers had omitted to put the idea'd words into red ink,
so they had to be picked out with infinite difficulty from the
multitude of unidea'd ones.
* "Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing . . . . his reasons are
as three grains of wheat in two bushels of chaff."
Other of the MSS., more ancient, wore a double veil. They hid their
sense in verbiage, and also in narrow Germanifled letters, farther
deformed by contractions and ornamental flourishes, whose joint effect
made a word look like a black daddy-long-legs, all sprawling fantastic
limbs and the body a dot.
The perusal of these pieces was slow and painful; it was like walking
or slipping about among broken ruins overgrown with nettles. But then
Uncle Fountain was so anxious to hook on to the Flunkeys--oh, Ciel!
what am I saying?--the Funteyns, and his direct genealogical evidence
had so completely broken down. She said to herself, "Oh dear! if I
could find something among these old writings, and show it him on his
return." She had them all dusted and brought down, and a table-cloth
laid on a long table in the drawing-room, and spelled them with a
good-humored patience that belonged partly to her character, partly to
her sex.
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