_How Mrs. =Bull=’s attendants were prepared on this subject._
Margaret could scarcely expect any other answer from her brother; he
might, indeed, have talked to his wife, and it would have become him to
have done so very loudly; but the settling matters of that kind, was
left entirely to her and Sir Thomas. This circumstance Peg knew, and
accordingly wrote to Mrs. Bull, Sir Thomas, and all her own clerks in
the office, to each in the stile which was proper for her to make use
of; and as all the originals are in our hands, not to interrupt the
course of our narration, we intend to defer the publication of them,
with that of many other original papers, to the conclusion of this
great work.
Notwithstanding that Peg had taken all this trouble, many people
were of opinion that the affair would never be heard of in the
counting-room, so much were they used to see Peg’s affairs overlooked;
but they were mistaken. Gilbert told Mrs. Bull the first or second time
he saw her, what a suit he was to present from her sister, and two
or three of Peg’s boys were determined that it should not go without
a hearing. Mean time, the nurse and Hubble-bubble were not idle. The
scheme which they thought to have frustrated was taking place very
fast. The boy George and his companions were laughing at them as
usual, and the young men who had been sent out to watch Lewis Baboon’s
motions, past their time merrily in the fields, playing at cricket,
pitch-bar, and foot-ball, from morning to night, eat their victuals
with a good appetite, and slept as sound in a barn, as ever they had
done in the best bed in John’s house: all which, the nurse would not
have believed, if you had sworn it to her on all the four evangelists.
In short, there was no appearance of their tiring, and they would have
held out through mere spite, if they had been tired, when they found
that there was any intention to vex them.
All this was sore enough upon the nurse, without being obliged to see
her predictions equally falsified, by having the same thing tried
in sister Peg’s house. This she could by no means think of with any
patience, and she determined to do all she could with Mrs. Bull
to prevent it. For this purpose, Hubble-bubble and she took their
opportunity to talk to many of Mrs. Bull’s attendants. They put them
in mind of all the perquisites, presents and vails, which had been so
kindly thrown in their way; observed of what consequence the present
affair was to them, and that if they suffered their friends to be
baffled, and discredited, they must not expect to be served so, in
time coming. You may soon get other people in our places, said they,
who will be willing to court you for the sake of your mistress; but
can you go as familiarly to a new comer, to ask for a bit of victuals,
or a glass of liquor between meals? By this and such like talk, they
contrived to secure the people who had Mrs. Bull’s ear. And though they
were sure of herself at last, yet matters would go much more smoothly,
if they could get any of sister Peg’s own clerks to give up the affair,
as if she was not very much bent upon it herself.
Historians agree, that they tampered with many people for this
purpose; but it is well known that not a soul of them would listen to
proposals of that kind, till they came to Bumbo, whom they would have
tried sooner, if they had not thought themselves sure of him, and
at the same time known what degree of credit he was likely to bring
them. They had sometimes let him loose upon Mrs. Bull before, to very
little purpose; although for discourse he was always ready, and had
stuff in his head, which might be turned into jocular sayings, serious
sentences, pathetic declamations, angry ebullitions, or plaintive
ditties, with equal propriety. He made the same thing pass in all these
shapes, but the hearers did not know either when to laugh or cry,
unless he gave them a signal, by a slap in the chops, a remarkable
roar, or a doleful whine, by means of which it was dangerous to sit
near him; and whether you was near him or no, the changes of his voice
produced an odd sort of mounting and dipping, like the heaving of
waves, and had the same effect in raising a violent inclination to
vomit. They say, that he had often turned Mrs. Bull’s stomach, and that
she always took cordials when she expected a visit from him. This being
the case, he was to be employed with caution; but he had still one
quality, from which they expected some good, and that was his precise
and accurate method of dividing mankind into Thomists and Geoffrites;
in the last of which classes, he commonly put his mother Peg.
A Geoffrite originally meant any person who was for restoring Squire
Geoffrey to the management of John Bull’s business, and a Thomist the
opposite. What this gentleman meant by these appellations nobody could
find out, for he sometimes bestowed them indifferently on Sir Thomas’s
best friends; and what is more surprizing still, on people who never
thought of Sir Thomas nor Squire Geoffrey in all their lives; as well
as some others, who never thought of any thing at all, but how to fill
their own bellies and their pockets. He himself, it was said, was a
Thomist of this kind; but whilst he did nothing himself, but swallow
the warm pottage he had got from John Bull’s nurse, he wanted to
persuade you, that other people’s heads were constantly taken up about
the divine right of attornies to treat their clients as they pleased. A
Geoffrite was his favourite topic to speak upon; but whether it was to
show his sagacity in finding out what escaped other people, or merely
because he had never seen any body paid for finding out Thomists, it
is certain, that for one Thomist, he would point you out a dozen of
Geoffrites; and you would be surprized, how the devil Sir Thomas got
into the management of John Bull’s or sister Peg’s business at all, as
Bumbo certainly was not in the way to help him to it.
With all these considerations pro and con, the nurse was extremely
desirous to see him; and as fortune would have it, he was no less
anxious to see her. He wanted at this very time a special reward for
all his services, no less than to be appointed major-domo in Peg’s own
house: this was a sort of a man house-keeper, and was commonly a grave
elderly person who kept the keys of Peg’s pantry, and entertained as
he thought proper any of the tenants, who had affairs about the house.
The last major-domo was lately dead; and as John Bull’s nurse took the
charge of all pantries and nurseries far and near, and would let nobody
meddle with them, but who was of her own chusing, it was not doubted at
this time, that her favourite Bumbo would be the man. But in order to
secure it the more, he furnished himself with a list of some dozen of
Geoffrites, picked up nobody knows how, and containing some of those
who were likely to oppose himself, in getting the major-domo-ship in
Peg’s family. With this provision he went down stairs, and so across
the court to John Bull’s house.