‘You’re kindly welcome to Castle Rackrent, my lady,’ says I (recollecting who she was).  ‘Did your honour hear of the bonfires?’

His honour spoke never a word, nor so much as handed her up the steps—­he looked to me no more like himself than nothing at all; I know I took him for the skeleton of his honour.  I was not sure what to say next to one or t’other, but seeing she was a stranger in a foreign country, I thought it but right to speak cheerful to her; so I went back again to the bonfires.

‘My lady,’ says I, as she crossed the hall, ’there would have been fifty times as many; but for fear of the horses, and frightening your ladyship, Jason and I forbid them, please your honour.’

With that she looked at me a little bewildered.

‘Will I have a fire lighted in the state-room to-night?’ was the next question I put to her, but never a word she answered; so I concluded she could not speak a word of English, and was from foreign parts.  The short and the long of it was, I couldn’t tell what to make of her; so I left her to herself, and went straight down to the servants’ hall to learn something for certain about her.  Sir Kit’s own man was tired, but the groom set him a-talking at last, and we had it all out before ever I closed my eyes that night.  The bride might well be a great fortune—­she was a Jewish by all accounts, who are famous for their great riches.  I had never seen any of that tribe or nation before, and could only gather that she spoke a strange kind of English of her own, that she could not abide pork or sausages, and went neither to church or mass.  Mercy upon his honour’s poor soul, thought I; what will become of him and his, and all of us, with his heretic blackamoor at the head of the Castle Rackrent estate?  I never slept a wink all night for thinking of it; but before the servants I put my pipe in my mouth, and kept my mind to myself, for I had a great regard for the family; and after this, when strange gentlemen’s servants came to the house, and would begin to talk about the bride, I took care to put the best foot foremost, and passed her for a nabob in the kitchen, which accounted for her dark complexion and everything.

The very morning after they came home, however, I saw plain enough how things were between Sir Kit and my lady, though they were walking together arm in arm after breakfast, looking at the new building and the improvements.

‘Old Thady,’ said my master, just as he used to do, ‘how do you do?’

‘Very well, I thank your honour’s honour,’ said I; but I saw he was not well pleased, and my heart was in my mouth as I walked along after him.

‘Is the large room damp, Thady?’ said his honour.

‘Oh damp, your honour! how should it be but as dry as a bone,’ says I, ’after all the fires we have kept in it day and night?  It’s the barrack-room your honour’s talking on [See glossary 20].’

‘And what is a barrack-room, pray, my dear?’ were the first words I ever heard out of my lady’s lips.