Your name, Sir!
Ha! my name, you say--my name?
‘T is well--my name--is--nay, I must consider.--Pedrillo.
This accident occasioned a delay of some days in the plans of the young
gentleman, for whom we trust very soon, both for our own convenience and
that of our reader, to find a fitting appellation.
Mr. Mordaunt, after seeing every attention paid to him both surgical
and hospitable, took his departure with a promise to call the next day;
leaving behind him a strong impression of curiosity and interest to
serve our hero as some mental occupation until his return. The bonny
landlady came up in a new cap, with blue ribbons, in the course of the
evening, to pay a visit of inquiry to the handsome patient, who was
removed from the Griffin, No. 4, to the Dragon, No. 8,--a room whose
merits were exactly in proportion to its number, namely, twice as great
as those of No. 4.
“Well, sir,” said Mrs. Taptape, with a courtesy, “I trust you find
yourself better.”
“At this moment I do,” said the gallant youth, with a significant air.
“Hem,” quoth the landlady.
A pause ensued. In spite of the compliment, a certain suspicion suddenly
darted across the mind of the hostess. Strong as are the prepossessions
of the sex, those of the profession are much stronger.
“Honest folk,” thought the landlady, “don’t travel with their initials
only; the last ‘Whitehall Evening’ was full of shocking accounts of
swindlers and cheats; and I gave nine pounds odd shillings for the
silver teapot John has brought him up,--as if the delft one was not good
enough for a foot traveller!”
Pursuing these ideas, Mrs. Taptape, looking bashfully down, said,--
“By the by, sir; Mr. Bossolton asked me what name he should put down in
his book for the medicines; what would you please me to say, sir?”
“Mr. who?” said the youth, elevating his eyebrows.
“Mr. Bossolton, sir, the apothecary.”
“Oh! Bossolton! very odd name that,--not near so pretty as--dear me,
what a beautiful cap that is of yours!” said the young gentleman.
“Lord, sir, do you think so? The ribbon is pretty enough; but--but, as
I was saying, what name shall I tell Mr. Bossolton to put in his book?”
“This,” thought Mrs. Taptape, “is coming to the point.”
“Well!” said the youth, slowly, and as if in a profound reverie, “well,
Bossolton is certainly the most singular name I ever heard; he does
right to put it in a book: it is quite a curiosity! is he clever?”
“Very, sir,” said the landlady, somewhat sharply; “but it is your name,
not his, that he wishes to put into his book.”
“Mine?” said the youth, who appeared to have been seeking to gain time
in order to answer a query which most men find requires very little
deliberation, “mine, you say; my name is Linden--Clarence Linden--you
understand?”
“What a pretty name!” thought the landlady’s daughter, who was listening
at the keyhole; “but how could he admire that odious cap of Ma’s!”
“And, now, landlady, I wish you would send up my boxes; and get me a
newspaper, if you please.”
“Yes, sir,” said the landlady, and she rose to retire.
“I do not think,” said the youth to himself, “that I could have hit on a
prettier name, and so novel a one too!--Clarence Linden,--why, if I were
that pretty girl at the bar I could fall in love with the very words.
Shakspeare was quite wrong when he said,--
‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’”
“A rose by any name would not smell as sweet; if a rose’s name was
Jeremiah Bossolton, for instance, it would not, to my nerves at least,
smell of anything but an apothecary’s shop!”
When Mordaunt called the next morning, he found Clarence much better,
and carelessly turning over various books, part of the contents of the
luggage superscribed C. L. A book of whatever description was among the
few companions for whom Mordaunt had neither fastidiousness nor reserve;
and the sympathy of taste between him and the sufferer gave rise to
a conversation less cold and commonplace than it might otherwise have
been. And when Mordaunt, after a stay of some length, rose to depart,
he pressed Linden to return his visit before he left that part of the
country; his place, he added, was only about five miles distant from
W----. Linden, greatly interested in his visitor, was not slow in
accepting the invitation, and, perhaps for the first time in his life,
Mordaunt was shaking hands with a stranger he had only known two days.