The next persons whom little Mrs. Timmins was bent upon asking, were
Mr. and Mrs. John Rowdy, of the firm of Stumpy, Rowdy and Co., of
Brobdingnag Gardens, of the Prairie, Putney, and of Lombard Street,
City.
Mrs. Timinins and Mrs. Rowdy had been brought up at the same school
together, and there was always a little rivalry between them, from the
day when they contended for the French prize at school to last week,
when each had a stall at the Fancy Fair for the benefit of the Daughters
of Decayed Muffin-men; and when Mrs. Timmins danced against Mrs. Rowdy
in the Scythe Mazurka at the Polish Ball, headed by Mrs. Hugh Slasher.
Rowdy took twenty-three pounds more than Timmins in the Muffin
transaction (for she had possession of a kettle-holder worked by the
hands of R-y-lty, which brought crowds to her stall); but in the Mazurka
Rosa conquered: she has the prettiest little foot possible (which in
a red boot and silver heel looked so lovely that even the Chinese
ambassador remarked it), whereas Mrs. Rowdy's foot is no trifle, as Lord
Cornbury acknowledged when it came down on his lordship's boot-tip as
they danced together amongst the Scythes.
“These people are ruining themselves,” said Mrs. John Rowdy to her
husband, on receiving the pink note. It was carried round by that rogue
of a buttony page in the evening; and he walked to Brobdingnag Gardens,
and in the Park afterwards, with a young lady who is kitchen-maid at 27,
and who is not more than fourteen years older than little Buttons.
“These people are ruining themselves,” said Mrs. John to her husband.
“Rosa says she has asked the Bungays.”
“Bungays indeed! Timmins was always a tuft-hunter,” said Rowdy, who had
been at college with the barrister, and who, for his own part, has no
more objection to a lord than you or I have; and adding, “Hang him, what
business has HE to be giving parties?” allowed Mrs. Rowdy, nevertheless,
to accept Rosa's invitation.
“When I go to business to-morrow, I will just have a look at Mr. Fitz's
account,” Mr. Rowdy thought; “and if it is overdrawn, as it usually is,
why . . .” The announcement of Mrs. Rowdy's brougham here put an end
to this agreeable train of thought; and the banker and his lady stepped
into it to join a snug little family-party of two-and-twenty, given by
Mr. and Mrs. Secondchop at their great house on the other side of the
Park.
“Rowdys 2, Bungays 3, ourselves and mamma 3, 2 Sawyers,” calculated
little Rosa.
“General Gulpin,” Rosa continued, “eats a great deal, and is very
stupid, but he looks well at table with his star and ribbon. Let us
put HIM down!” and she noted down “Sir Thomas and Lady Gulpin, 2. Lord
Castlemouldy, 1.”
“You will make your party abominably genteel and stupid,” groaned
Timmins. “Why don't you ask some of our old friends? Old Mrs. Portman
has asked us twenty times, I am sure, within the last two years.”
“And the last time we went there, there was pea-soup for dinner!” Mrs.
Timmins said, with a look of ineffable scorn.
“Nobody can have been kinder than the Hodges have always been to us; and
some sort of return we might make, I think.”
“Return, indeed! A pretty sound it is on the staircase to hear 'Mr. and
Mrs. 'Odge and Miss 'Odges' pronounced by Billiter, who always leaves
his h's out. No, no: see attorneys at your chambers, my dear--but
what could the poor creatures do in OUR society?” And so, one by one,
Timmins's old friends were tried and eliminated by Mrs. Timmins, just as
if she had been an Irish Attorney-General, and they so many Catholics on
Mr. Mitchel's jury.
Mrs. Fitzroy insisted that the party should be of her very best company.
Funnyman, the great wit, was asked, because of his jokes; and Mrs. Butt,
on whom he practises; and Potter, who is asked because everybody else
asks him; and Mr. Ranville Ranville of the Foreign Office, who might
give some news of the Spanish squabble; and Botherby, who has suddenly
sprung up into note because he is intimate with the French Revolution,
and visits Ledru-Rollin and Lamartine. And these, with a couple more who
are amis de la maison, made up the twenty, whom Mrs. Timmins thought she
might safely invite to her little dinner.
But the deuce of it was, that when the answers to the invitations came
back, everybody accepted! Here was a pretty quandary. How they were to
get twenty into their dining-room was a calculation which poor Timmins
could not solve at all; and he paced up and down the little room in
dismay.
“Pooh!” said Rosa with a laugh. “Your sister Blanche looked very well in
one of my dresses last year; and you know how stout she is. We will find
some means to accommodate them all, depend upon it.”
Mrs. John Rowdy's note to dear Rosa, accepting the latter's invitation,
was a very gracious and kind one; and Mrs. Fitz showed it to her husband
when he came back from chambers. But there was another note which had
arrived for him by this time from Mr. Rowdy--or rather from the firm;
and to the effect that Mr. F. Timmins had overdrawn his account 28L.
18s. 6d., and was requested to pay that sum to his obedient servants,
Stumpy, Rowdy and Co.
*****
And Timmins did not like to tell his wife that the contending parties in
the Lough Foyle and Lough Corrib Railroad had come to a settlement, and
that the fifteen guineas a day had consequently determined. “I have had
seven days of it, though,” he thought; “and that will be enough to
pay for the desk, the dinner, and the glasses, and make all right with
Stumpy and Rowdy.”