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The Rule of the Regent.
Betty never forgot her first sight of the old friend of her family.
Returning with a sad heart, she was walking the colt slowly through the carriage-gates, when an extravagantly stout lady, in green muslin illustrated with huge red flowers, came out upon the porch and waved a fat arm to the girl.

The visitor wore a dark-green turban and a Cashmere shawl, while the expanse of her skirts was nothing short of magnificent: some cathedral-dome seemed to have been misplaced and the lady dropped into it.

Her outstretched hand terrified Betty: how was she to approach near enough to take it?
Mrs.Tanberry was about sixty, looked forty, and at first you might have guessed she weighed nearly three hundred, but the lightness of her smile and the actual buoyancy which she somehow imparted to her whole dominion lessened that by at least a hundred-weight.

She ballooned out to the horse-block with a billowy rush somewhere between bounding and soaring; and Miss Betty slid down from the colt, who shied violently, to find herself enveloped, in spite of the dome, in a vast surf of green and red muslin.
"My charming girl!" exclaimed the lady vehemently, in a voice of such husky richness, of such merriment and unction of delight, that it fell upon Miss Betty's ear with more of the quality of sheer gayety than any she had ever heard.