Well; Mr. Augustus Cooper went away to one of the cheap shoemakers’

shops in Holborn, where gentlemen’s dress-pumps are seven-and-sixpence,

and men’s strong walking just nothing at all, and bought a pair of the

regular seven-and-sixpenny, long-quartered, town-mades, in which he

astonished himself quite as much as his mother, and sallied forth to

Signor Billsmethi’s. There were four other private pupils in the

parlour: two ladies and two gentlemen. Such nice people! Not a bit of

pride about them. One of the ladies in particular, who was in training

for a Columbine, was remarkably affable; and she and Miss Billsmethi

took such an interest in Mr. Augustus Cooper, and joked, and smiled,

and looked so bewitching, that he got quite at home, and learnt his

steps in no time. After the practising was over, Signor Billsmethi, and

Miss Billsmethi, and Master Billsmethi, and a young lady, and the two

ladies, and the two gentlemen, danced a quadrille—none of your slipping

and sliding about, but regular warm work, flying into corners, and

diving among chairs, and shooting out at the door,—something like

dancing! Signor Billsmethi in particular, notwithstanding his having a

little fiddle to play all the time, was out on the landing every

figure, and Master Billsmethi, when everybody else was breathless,

danced a hornpipe, with a cane in his hand, and a cheese-plate on his

head, to the unqualified admiration of the whole company. Then, Signor

Billsmethi insisted, as they were so happy, that they should all stay

to supper, and proposed sending Master Billsmethi for the beer and

spirits, whereupon the two gentlemen swore, ‘strike ’em wulgar if

they’d stand that;’ and were just going to quarrel who should pay for

it, when Mr. Augustus Cooper said he would, if they’d have the kindness

to allow him—and they _had_ the kindness to allow him; and Master

Billsmethi brought the beer in a can, and the rum in a quart pot. They

had a regular night of it; and Miss Billsmethi squeezed Mr. Augustus

Cooper’s hand under the table; and Mr. Augustus Cooper returned the

squeeze, and returned home too, at something to six o’clock in the

morning, when he was put to bed by main force by the apprentice, after

repeatedly expressing an uncontrollable desire to pitch his revered

parent out of the second-floor window, and to throttle the apprentice

with his own neck-handkerchief.

Weeks had worn on, and the seven-and-sixpenny town-mades had nearly

worn out, when the night arrived for the grand dress-ball at which the

whole of the five-and-seventy pupils were to meet together, for the

first time that season, and to take out some portion of their

respective four-and-sixpences in lamp-oil and fiddlers. Mr. Augustus

Cooper had ordered a new coat for the occasion—a two-pound-tenner from

Turnstile. It was his first appearance in public; and, after a grand

Sicilian shawl-dance by fourteen young ladies in character, he was to

open the quadrille department with Miss Billsmethi herself, with whom

he had become quite intimate since his first introduction. It _was_ a

night! Everything was admirably arranged. The sandwich-boy took the

hats and bonnets at the street-door; there was a turn-up bedstead in

the back parlour, on which Miss Billsmethi made tea and coffee for such

of the gentlemen as chose to pay for it, and such of the ladies as the

gentlemen treated; red port-wine negus and lemonade were handed round

at eighteen-pence a head; and in pursuance of a previous engagement

with the public-house at the corner of the street, an extra potboy was

laid on for the occasion. In short, nothing could exceed the

arrangements, except the company. Such ladies! Such pink silk

stockings! Such artificial flowers! Such a number of cabs! No sooner

had one cab set down a couple of ladies, than another cab drove up and

set down another couple of ladies, and they all knew: not only one

another, but the majority of the gentlemen into the bargain, which made

it all as pleasant and lively as could be. Signor Billsmethi, in black

tights, with a large blue bow in his buttonhole, introduced the ladies

to such of the gentlemen as were strangers: and the ladies talked

away—and laughed they did—it was delightful to see them.

As to the shawl-dance, it was the most exciting thing that ever was

beheld; there was such a whisking, and rustling, and fanning, and

getting ladies into a tangle with artificial flowers, and then

disentangling them again! And as to Mr. Augustus Cooper’s share in the

quadrille, he got through it admirably. He was missing from his

partner, now and then, certainly, and discovered on such occasions to

be either dancing with laudable perseverance in another set, or sliding

about in perspective, without any definite object; but, generally

speaking, they managed to shove him through the figure, until he turned

up in the right place. Be this as it may, when he had finished, a great

many ladies and gentlemen came up and complimented him very much, and

said they had never seen a beginner do anything like it before; and Mr.

Augustus Cooper was perfectly satisfied with himself, and everybody

else into the bargain; and ‘stood’ considerable quantities of

spirits-and-water, negus, and compounds, for the use and behoof of two

or three dozen very particular friends, selected from the select circle

of five-and-seventy pupils.

Now, whether it was the strength of the compounds, or the beauty of the

ladies, or what not, it did so happen that Mr. Augustus Cooper

encouraged, rather than repelled, the very flattering attentions of a

young lady in brown gauze over white calico who had appeared

particularly struck with him from the first; and when the

encouragements had been prolonged for some time, Miss Billsmethi

betrayed her spite and jealousy thereat by calling the young lady in

brown gauze a ‘creeter,’ which induced the young lady in brown gauze to

retort, in certain sentences containing a taunt founded on the payment

of four-and-sixpence a quarter, which reference Mr. Augustus Cooper,

being then and there in a state of considerable bewilderment, expressed

his entire concurrence in. Miss Billsmethi, thus renounced, forthwith

began screaming in the loudest key of her voice, at the rate of

fourteen screams a minute; and being unsuccessful, in an onslaught on

the eyes and face, first of the lady in gauze and then of Mr. Augustus

Cooper, called distractedly on the other three-and-seventy pupils to

furnish her with oxalic acid for her own private drinking; and, the

call not being honoured, made another rush at Mr. Cooper, and then had

her stay-lace cut, and was carried off to bed. Mr. Augustus Cooper, not

being remarkable for quickness of apprehension, was at a loss to

understand what all this meant, until Signor Billsmethi explained it in

a most satisfactory manner, by stating to the pupils, that Mr. Augustus

Cooper had made and confirmed divers promises of marriage to his

daughter on divers occasions, and had now basely deserted her; on

which, the indignation of the pupils became universal; and as several

chivalrous gentlemen inquired rather pressingly of Mr. Augustus Cooper,

whether he required anything for his own use, or, in other words,

whether he ‘wanted anything for himself,’ he deemed it prudent to make

a precipitate retreat. And the upshot of the matter was, that a

lawyer’s letter came next day, and an action was commenced next week;

and that Mr. Augustus Cooper, after walking twice to the Serpentine for

the purpose of drowning himself, and coming twice back without doing

it, made a confidante of his mother, who compromised the matter with

twenty pounds from the till: which made twenty pounds four shillings

and sixpence paid to Signor Billsmethi, exclusive of treats and pumps.

And Mr. Augustus Cooper went back and lived with his mother, and there

he lives to this day; and as he has lost his ambition for society, and

never goes into the world, he will never see this account of himself,

and will never be any the wiser.

CHAPTER X—SHABBY-GENTEEL PEOPLE

There are certain descriptions of people who, oddly enough, appear to

appertain exclusively to the metropolis. You meet them, every day, in

the streets of London, but no one ever encounters them elsewhere; they

seem indigenous to the soil, and to belong as exclusively to London as

its own smoke, or the dingy bricks and mortar. We could illustrate the

remark by a variety of examples, but, in our present sketch, we will

only advert to one class as a specimen—that class which is so aptly and

expressively designated as ‘shabby-genteel.’

Now, shabby people, God knows, may be found anywhere, and genteel

people are not articles of greater scarcity out of London than in it;

but this compound of the two—this shabby-gentility—is as purely local

as the statue at Charing-cross, or the pump at Aldgate. It is worthy of

remark, too, that only men are shabby-genteel; a woman is always either

dirty and slovenly in the extreme, or neat and respectable, however

poverty-stricken in appearance. A very poor man, ‘who has seen better

days,’ as the phrase goes, is a strange compound of dirty-slovenliness

and wretched attempts at faded smartness.

We will endeavour to explain our conception of the term which forms the

title of this paper. If you meet a man, lounging up Drury-Lane, or

leaning with his back against a post in Long-acre, with his hands in

the pockets of a pair of drab trousers plentifully besprinkled with

grease-spots: the trousers made very full over the boots, and

ornamented with two cords down the outside of each leg—wearing, also,

what has been a brown coat with bright buttons, and a hat very much

pinched up at the side, cocked over his right eye—don’t pity him. He is

not shabby-genteel. The ‘harmonic meetings’ at some fourth-rate

public-house, or the purlieus of a private theatre, are his chosen

haunts; he entertains a rooted antipathy to any kind of work, and is on

familiar terms with several pantomime men at the large houses. But, if

you see hurrying along a by-street, keeping as close as he can to the

area-railings, a man of about forty or fifty, clad in an old rusty suit

of threadbare black cloth which shines with constant wear as if it had

been bees-waxed—the trousers tightly strapped down, partly for the look

of the thing and partly to keep his old shoes from slipping off at the

heels,—if you observe, too, that his yellowish-white neckerchief is

carefully pinned up, to conceal the tattered garment underneath, and

that his hands are encased in the remains of an old pair of beaver

gloves, you may set him down as a shabby-genteel man. A glance at that

depressed face, and timorous air of conscious poverty, will make your

heart ache—always supposing that you are neither a philosopher nor a

political economist.

We were once haunted by a shabby-genteel man; he was bodily present to

our senses all day, and he was in our mind’s eye all night. The man of

whom Sir Walter Scott speaks in his Demonology, did not suffer half the

persecution from his imaginary gentleman-usher in black velvet, that we

sustained from our friend in quondam black cloth. He first attracted

our notice, by sitting opposite to us in the reading-room at the

British Museum; and what made the man more remarkable was, that he

always had before him a couple of shabby-genteel books—two old

dog’s-eared folios, in mouldy worm-eaten covers, which had once been

smart. He was in his chair, every morning, just as the clock struck

ten; he was always the last to leave the room in the afternoon; and

when he did, he quitted it with the air of a man who knew not where

else to go, for warmth and quiet. There he used to sit all day, as

close to the table as possible, in order to conceal the lack of buttons

on his coat: with his old hat carefully deposited at his feet, where he

evidently flattered himself it escaped observation.

About two o’clock, you would see him munching a French roll or a penny

loaf; not taking it boldly out of his pocket at once, like a man who

knew he was only making a lunch; but breaking off little bits in his

pocket, and eating them by stealth. He knew too well it was his dinner.

When we first saw this poor object, we thought it quite impossible that

his attire could ever become worse. We even went so far, as to

speculate on the possibility of his shortly appearing in a decent

second-hand suit. We knew nothing about the matter; he grew more and

more shabby-genteel every day. The buttons dropped off his waistcoat,

one by one; then, he buttoned his coat; and when one side of the coat

was reduced to the same condition as the waistcoat, he buttoned it

over—on the other side. He looked somewhat better at the beginning of

the week than at the conclusion, because the neckerchief, though

yellow, was not quite so dingy; and, in the midst of all this

wretchedness, he never appeared without gloves and straps. He remained

in this state for a week or two. At length, one of the buttons on the

back of the coat fell off, and then the man himself disappeared, and we

thought he was dead.

We were sitting at the same table about a week after his disappearance,

and as our eyes rested on his vacant chair, we insensibly fell into a

train of meditation on the subject of his retirement from public life.

We were wondering whether he had hung himself, or thrown himself off a

bridge—whether he really was dead or had only been arrested—when our

conjectures were suddenly set at rest by the entry of the man himself.

He had undergone some strange metamorphosis, and walked up the centre

of the room with an air which showed he was fully conscious of the

improvement in his appearance. It was very odd. His clothes were a

fine, deep, glossy black; and yet they looked like the same suit; nay,

there were the very darns with which old acquaintance had made us

familiar. The hat, too—nobody could mistake the shape of that hat, with

its high crown gradually increasing in circumference towards the top.

Long service had imparted to it a reddish-brown tint; but, now, it was

as black as the coat. The truth flashed suddenly upon us—they had been

‘revived.’ It is a deceitful liquid that black and blue reviver; we

have watched its effects on many a shabby-genteel man. It betrays its

victims into a temporary assumption of importance: possibly into the

purchase of a new pair of gloves, or a cheap stock, or some other

trifling article of dress. It elevates their spirits for a week, only

to depress them, if possible, below their original level. It was so in

this case; the transient dignity of the unhappy man decreased, in exact

proportion as the ‘reviver’ wore off. The knees of the unmentionables,

and the elbows of the coat, and the seams generally, soon began to get

alarmingly white. The hat was once more deposited under the table, and

its owner crept into his seat as quietly as ever.

There was a week of incessant small rain and mist. At its expiration

the ‘reviver’ had entirely vanished, and the shabby-genteel man never

afterwards attempted to effect any improvement in his outward

appearance.

It would be difficult to name any particular part of town as the

principal resort of shabby-genteel men. We have met a great many

persons of this description in the neighbourhood of the inns of court.

They may be met with, in Holborn, between eight and ten any morning;

and whoever has the curiosity to enter the Insolvent Debtors’ Court

will observe, both among spectators and practitioners, a great variety

of them. We never went on ‘Change, by any chance, without seeing some

shabby-genteel men, and we have often wondered what earthly business

they can have there. They will sit there, for hours, leaning on great,

dropsical, mildewed umbrellas, or eating Abernethy biscuits. Nobody

speaks to them, nor they to any one. On consideration, we remember to

have occasionally seen two shabby-genteel men conversing together on

‘Change, but our experience assures us that this is an uncommon

circumstance, occasioned by the offer of a pinch of snuff, or some such

civility.

It would be a task of equal difficulty, either to assign any particular

spot for the residence of these beings, or to endeavour to enumerate

their general occupations. We were never engaged in business with more

than one shabby-genteel man; and he was a drunken engraver, and lived

in a damp back-parlour in a new row of houses at Camden-town, half

street, half brick-field, somewhere near the canal. A shabby-genteel

man may have no occupation, or he may be a corn agent, or a coal agent,

or a wine merchant, or a collector of debts, or a broker’s assistant,

or a broken-down attorney. He may be a clerk of the lowest description,

or a contributor to the press of the same grade. Whether our readers

have noticed these men, in their walks, as often as we have, we know

not; this we know—that the miserably poor man (no matter whether he

owes his distresses to his own conduct, or that of others) who feels

his poverty and vainly strives to conceal it, is one of the most

pitiable objects in human nature. Such objects, with few exceptions,

are shabby-genteel people.

CHAPTER XI—MAKING A NIGHT OF IT

Damon and Pythias were undoubtedly very good fellows in their way: the

former for his extreme readiness to put in special bail for a friend:

and the latter for a certain trump-like punctuality in turning up just

in the very nick of time, scarcely less remarkable. Many points in

their character have, however, grown obsolete. Damons are rather hard

to find, in these days of imprisonment for debt (except the sham ones,

and they cost half-a-crown); and, as to the Pythiases, the few that

have existed in these degenerate times, have had an unfortunate knack

of making themselves scarce, at the very moment when their appearance

would have been strictly classical. If the actions of these heroes,

however, can find no parallel in modern times, their friendship can. We

have Damon and Pythias on the one hand. We have Potter and Smithers on

the other; and, lest the two last-mentioned names should never have

reached the ears of our unenlightened readers, we can do no better than

make them acquainted with the owners thereof.

Mr. Thomas Potter, then, was a clerk in the city, and Mr. Robert

Smithers was a ditto in the same; their incomes were limited, but their

friendship was unbounded. They lived in the same street, walked into

town every morning at the same hour, dined at the same slap-bang every

day, and revelled in each other’s company very night. They were knit

together by the closest ties of intimacy and friendship, or, as Mr.

Thomas Potter touchingly observed, they were ‘thick-and-thin pals, and

nothing but it.’ There was a spice of romance in Mr. Smithers’s

disposition, a ray of poetry, a gleam of misery, a sort of

consciousness of he didn’t exactly know what, coming across him he

didn’t precisely know why—which stood out in fine relief against the

off-hand, dashing, amateur-pickpocket-sort-of-manner, which

distinguished Mr. Potter in an eminent degree.

The peculiarity of their respective dispositions, extended itself to

their individual costume. Mr. Smithers generally appeared in public in

a surtout and shoes, with a narrow black neckerchief and a brown hat,

very much turned up at the sides—peculiarities which Mr. Potter wholly

eschewed, for it was his ambition to do something in the celebrated

‘kiddy’ or stage-coach way, and he had even gone so far as to invest

capital in the purchase of a rough blue coat with wooden buttons, made

upon the fireman’s principle, in which, with the addition of a

low-crowned, flower-pot-saucer-shaped hat, he had created no

inconsiderable sensation at the Albion in Little Russell-street, and

divers other places of public and fashionable resort.

Mr. Potter and Mr. Smithers had mutually agreed that, on the receipt of

their quarter’s salary, they would jointly and in company ‘spend the

evening’—an evident misnomer—the spending applying, as everybody knows,

not to the evening itself but to all the money the individual may

chance to be possessed of, on the occasion to which reference is made;

and they had likewise agreed that, on the evening aforesaid, they would

‘make a night of it’—an expressive term, implying the borrowing of

several hours from to-morrow morning, adding them to the night before,

and manufacturing a compound night of the whole.

The quarter-day arrived at last—we say at last, because quarter-days

are as eccentric as comets: moving wonderfully quick when you have a

good deal to pay, and marvellously slow when you have a little to

receive. Mr. Thomas Potter and Mr. Robert Smithers met by appointment

to begin the evening with a dinner; and a nice, snug, comfortable

dinner they had, consisting of a little procession of four chops and

four kidneys, following each other, supported on either side by a pot

of the real draught stout, and attended by divers cushions of bread,

and wedges of cheese.

When the cloth was removed, Mr. Thomas Potter ordered the waiter to

bring in, two goes of his best Scotch whiskey, with warm water and

sugar, and a couple of his ‘very mildest’ Havannahs, which the waiter

did. Mr. Thomas Potter mixed his grog, and lighted his cigar; Mr.

Robert Smithers did the same; and then, Mr. Thomas Potter jocularly

proposed as the first toast, ‘the abolition of all offices whatever’

(not sinecures, but counting-houses), which was immediately drunk by

Mr. Robert Smithers, with enthusiastic applause. So they went on,

talking politics, puffing cigars, and sipping whiskey-and-water, until

the ‘goes’—most appropriately so called—were both gone, which Mr.

Robert Smithers perceiving, immediately ordered in two more goes of the

best Scotch whiskey, and two more of the very mildest Havannahs; and

the goes kept coming in, and the mild Havannahs kept going out, until,

what with the drinking, and lighting, and puffing, and the stale ashes

on the table, and the tallow-grease on the cigars, Mr. Robert Smithers

began to doubt the mildness of the Havannahs, and to feel very much as

if he had been sitting in a hackney-coach with his back to the horses.

As to Mr. Thomas Potter, he _would_ keep laughing out loud, and

volunteering inarticulate declarations that he was ‘all right;’ in

proof of which, he feebly bespoke the evening paper after the next

gentleman, but finding it a matter of some difficulty to discover any

news in its columns, or to ascertain distinctly whether it had any

columns at all, walked slowly out to look for the moon, and, after

coming back quite pale with looking up at the sky so long, and

attempting to express mirth at Mr. Robert Smithers having fallen

asleep, by various galvanic chuckles, laid his head on his arm, and

went to sleep also. When he awoke again, Mr. Robert Smithers awoke too,

and they both very gravely agreed that it was extremely unwise to eat

so many pickled walnuts with the chops, as it was a notorious fact that

they always made people queer and sleepy; indeed, if it had not been

for the whiskey and cigars, there was no knowing what harm they

mightn’t have done ’em. So they took some coffee, and after paying the

bill,—twelve and twopence the dinner, and the odd tenpence for the

waiter—thirteen shillings in all—started out on their expedition to

manufacture a night.

It was just half-past eight, so they thought they couldn’t do better

than go at half-price to the slips at the City Theatre, which they did

accordingly. Mr. Robert Smithers, who had become extremely poetical

after the settlement of the bill, enlivening the walk by informing Mr.

Thomas Potter in confidence that he felt an inward presentiment of

approaching dissolution, and subsequently embellishing the theatre, by

falling asleep with his head and both arms gracefully drooping over the

front of the boxes.

Such was the quiet demeanour of the unassuming Smithers, and such were

the happy effects of Scotch whiskey and Havannahs on that interesting

person! But Mr. Thomas Potter, whose great aim it was to be considered

as a ‘knowing card,’ a ‘fast-goer,’ and so forth, conducted himself in

a very different manner, and commenced going very fast indeed—rather

too fast at last, for the patience of the audience to keep pace with

him. On his first entry, he contented himself by earnestly calling upon

the gentlemen in the gallery to ‘flare up,’ accompanying the demand

with another request, expressive of his wish that they would

instantaneously ‘form a union,’ both which requisitions were responded

to, in the manner most in vogue on such occasions.

‘Give that dog a bone!’ cried one gentleman in his shirt-sleeves.

‘Where have you been a having half a pint of intermediate beer?’ cried

a second. ‘Tailor!’ screamed a third. ‘Barber’s clerk!’ shouted a

fourth. ‘Throw him o—ver!’ roared a fifth; while numerous voices

concurred in desiring Mr. Thomas Potter to ‘go home to his mother!’ All

these taunts Mr. Thomas Potter received with supreme contempt, cocking

the low-crowned hat a little more on one side, whenever any reference

was made to his personal appearance, and, standing up with his arms

a-kimbo, expressing defiance melodramatically.

The overture—to which these various sounds had been an _ad libitum_

accompaniment—concluded, the second piece began, and Mr. Thomas Potter,

emboldened by impunity, proceeded to behave in a most unprecedented and

outrageous manner. First of all, he imitated the shake of the principal

female singer; then, groaned at the blue fire; then, affected to be

frightened into convulsions of terror at the appearance of the ghost;

and, lastly, not only made a running commentary, in an audible voice,

upon the dialogue on the stage, but actually awoke Mr. Robert Smithers,

who, hearing his companion making a noise, and having a very indistinct

notion where he was, or what was required of him, immediately, by way

of imitating a good example, set up the most unearthly, unremitting,

and appalling howling that ever audience heard. It was too much. ‘Turn

them out!’ was the general cry. A noise, as of shuffling of feet, and

men being knocked up with violence against wainscoting, was heard: a

hurried dialogue of ‘Come out?’—‘I won’t!’—‘You shall!’—‘I

shan’t!’—‘Give me your card, Sir?’—‘You’re a scoundrel, Sir!’ and so

forth, succeeded. A round of applause betokened the approbation of the

audience, and Mr. Robert Smithers and Mr. Thomas Potter found

themselves shot with astonishing swiftness into the road, without

having had the trouble of once putting foot to ground during the whole

progress of their rapid descent.

Mr. Robert Smithers, being constitutionally one of the slow-goers, and

having had quite enough of fast-going, in the course of his recent

expulsion, to last until the quarter-day then next ensuing at the very

least, had no sooner emerged with his companion from the precincts of

Milton-street, than he proceeded to indulge in circuitous references to

the beauties of sleep, mingled with distant allusions to the propriety

of returning to Islington, and testing the influence of their patent

Bramahs over the street-door locks to which they respectively belonged.

Mr. Thomas Potter, however, was valorous and peremptory. They had come

out to make a night of it: and a night must be made. So Mr. Robert

Smithers, who was three parts dull, and the other dismal, despairingly

assented; and they went into a wine-vaults, to get materials for

assisting them in making a night; where they found a good many young

ladies, and various old gentlemen, and a plentiful sprinkling of

hackney-coachmen and cab-drivers, all drinking and talking together;

and Mr. Thomas Potter and Mr. Robert Smithers drank small glasses of

brandy, and large glasses of soda, until they began to have a very

confused idea, either of things in general, or of anything in

particular; and, when they had done treating themselves they began to

treat everybody else; and the rest of the entertainment was a confused

mixture of heads and heels, black eyes and blue uniforms, mud and

gas-lights, thick doors, and stone paving.

Then, as standard novelists expressively inform us—‘all was a blank!’

and in the morning the blank was filled up with the words

‘Station-house,’ and the station-house was filled up with Mr. Thomas

Potter, Mr. Robert Smithers, and the major part of their wine-vault

companions of the preceding night, with a comparatively small portion

of clothing of any kind. And it was disclosed at the Police-office, to

the indignation of the Bench, and the astonishment of the spectators,

how one Robert Smithers, aided and abetted by one Thomas Potter, had

knocked down and beaten, in divers streets, at different times, five

men, four boys, and three women; how the said Thomas Potter had

feloniously obtained possession of five door-knockers, two

bell-handles, and a bonnet; how Robert Smithers, his friend, had sworn,

at least forty pounds’ worth of oaths, at the rate of five shillings

apiece; terrified whole streets full of Her Majesty’s subjects with

awful shrieks and alarms of fire; destroyed the uniforms of five

policemen; and committed various other atrocities, too numerous to

recapitulate. And the magistrate, after an appropriate reprimand, fined

Mr. Thomas Potter and Mr. Thomas Smithers five shillings each, for

being, what the law vulgarly terms, drunk; and thirty-four pounds for

seventeen assaults at forty shillings a-head, with liberty to speak to

the prosecutors.

The prosecutors _were_ spoken to, and Messrs. Potter and Smithers lived

on credit, for a quarter, as best they might; and, although the

prosecutors expressed their readiness to be assaulted twice a week, on

the same terms, they have never since been detected in ‘making a night

of it.’

CHAPTER XII—THE PRISONERS’ VAN

We were passing the corner of Bow-street, on our return from a lounging

excursion the other afternoon, when a crowd, assembled round the door

of the Police-office, attracted our attention. We turned up the street

accordingly. There were thirty or forty people, standing on the

pavement and half across the road; and a few stragglers were patiently

stationed on the opposite side of the way—all evidently waiting in

expectation of some arrival. We waited too, a few minutes, but nothing

occurred; so, we turned round to an unshorn, sallow-looking cobbler,

who was standing next us with his hands under the bib of his apron, and

put the usual question of ‘What’s the matter?’ The cobbler eyed us from

head to foot, with superlative contempt, and laconically replied

‘Nuffin.’

Now, we were perfectly aware that if two men stop in the street to look

at any given object, or even to gaze in the air, two hundred men will

be assembled in no time; but, as we knew very well that no crowd of

people could by possibility remain in a street for five minutes without

getting up a little amusement among themselves, unless they had some

absorbing object in view, the natural inquiry next in order was, ‘What

are all these people waiting here for?’—‘Her Majesty’s carriage,’

replied the cobbler. This was still more extraordinary. We could not

imagine what earthly business Her Majesty’s carriage could have at the

Public Office, Bow-street. We were beginning to ruminate on the

possible causes of such an uncommon appearance, when a general

exclamation from all the boys in the crowd of ‘Here’s the wan!’ caused

us to raise our heads, and look up the street.

The covered vehicle, in which prisoners are conveyed from the

police-offices to the different prisons, was coming along at full

speed. It then occurred to us, for the first time, that Her Majesty’s

carriage was merely another name for the prisoners’ van, conferred upon

it, not only by reason of the superior gentility of the term, but

because the aforesaid van is maintained at Her Majesty’s expense:

having been originally started for the exclusive accommodation of

ladies and gentlemen under the necessity of visiting the various houses

of call known by the general denomination of ‘Her Majesty’s Gaols.’

The van drew up at the office-door, and the people thronged round the

steps, just leaving a little alley for the prisoners to pass through.

Our friend the cobbler, and the other stragglers, crossed over, and we

followed their example. The driver, and another man who had been seated

by his side in front of the vehicle, dismounted, and were admitted into

the office. The office-door was closed after them, and the crowd were

on the tiptoe of expectation.

After a few minutes’ delay, the door again opened, and the two first

prisoners appeared. They were a couple of girls, of whom the

elder—could not be more than sixteen, and the younger of whom had

certainly not attained her fourteenth year. That they were sisters, was

evident, from the resemblance which still subsisted between them,

though two additional years of depravity had fixed their brand upon the

elder girl’s features, as legibly as if a red-hot iron had seared them.

They were both gaudily dressed, the younger one especially; and,

although there was a strong similarity between them in both respects,

which was rendered the more obvious by their being handcuffed together,

it is impossible to conceive a greater contrast than the demeanour of

the two presented. The younger girl was weeping bitterly—not for

display, or in the hope of producing effect, but for very shame: her

face was buried in her handkerchief: and her whole manner was but too

expressive of bitter and unavailing sorrow.

‘How long are you for, Emily?’ screamed a red-faced woman in the crowd.

‘Six weeks and labour,’ replied the elder girl with a flaunting laugh;

‘and that’s better than the stone jug anyhow; the mill’s a deal better

than the Sessions, and here’s Bella a-going too for the first time.

Hold up your head, you chicken,’ she continued, boisterously tearing

the other girl’s handkerchief away; ‘Hold up your head, and show ’em

your face. I an’t jealous, but I’m blessed if I an’t game!’—‘That’s

right, old gal,’ exclaimed a man in a paper cap, who, in common with

the greater part of the crowd, had been inexpressibly delighted with

this little incident.—‘Right!’ replied the girl; ‘ah, to be sure;

what’s the odds, eh?’—‘Come! In with you,’ interrupted the driver.

‘Don’t you be in a hurry, coachman,’ replied the girl, ‘and recollect I

want to be set down in Cold Bath Fields—large house with a high

garden-wall in front; you can’t mistake it. Hallo. Bella, where are you

going to—you’ll pull my precious arm off?’ This was addressed to the

younger girl, who, in her anxiety to hide herself in the caravan, had

ascended the steps first, and forgotten the strain upon the handcuff.

‘Come down, and let’s show you the way.’ And after jerking the

miserable girl down with a force which made her stagger on the

pavement, she got into the vehicle, and was followed by her wretched

companion.

These two girls had been thrown upon London streets, their vices and

debauchery, by a sordid and rapacious mother. What the younger girl was

then, the elder had been once; and what the elder then was, the younger

must soon become. A melancholy prospect, but how surely to be realised;

a tragic drama, but how often acted! Turn to the prisons and police

offices of London—nay, look into the very streets themselves. These

things pass before our eyes, day after day, and hour after hour—they

have become such matters of course, that they are utterly disregarded.

The progress of these girls in crime will be as rapid as the flight of

a pestilence, resembling it too in its baneful influence and

wide-spreading infection. Step by step, how many wretched females,

within the sphere of every man’s observation, have become involved in a

career of vice, frightful to contemplate; hopeless at its commencement,

loathsome and repulsive in its course; friendless, forlorn, and

unpitied, at its miserable conclusion!

There were other prisoners—boys of ten, as hardened in vice as men of

fifty—a houseless vagrant, going joyfully to prison as a place of food

and shelter, handcuffed to a man whose prospects were ruined, character

lost, and family rendered destitute, by his first offence. Our

curiosity, however, was satisfied. The first group had left an

impression on our mind we would gladly have avoided, and would

willingly have effaced.

The crowd dispersed; the vehicle rolled away with its load of guilt and

misfortune; and we saw no more of the Prisoners’ Van.

TALES

CHAPTER I—THE BOARDING-HOUSE

CHAPTER I.

Mrs. Tibbs was, beyond all dispute, the most tidy, fidgety, thrifty

little personage that ever inhaled the smoke of London; and the house

of Mrs. Tibbs was, decidedly, the neatest in all Great Coram-street.

The area and the area-steps, and the street-door and the street-door

steps, and the brass handle, and the door-plate, and the knocker, and

the fan-light, were all as clean and bright, as indefatigable

white-washing, and hearth-stoning, and scrubbing and rubbing, could

make them. The wonder was, that the brass door-plate, with the

interesting inscription ‘Mrs. Tibbs,’ had never caught fire from

constant friction, so perseveringly was it polished. There were

meat-safe-looking blinds in the parlour-windows, blue and gold curtains

in the drawing-room, and spring-roller blinds, as Mrs. Tibbs was wont

in the pride of her heart to boast, ‘all the way up.’ The bell-lamp in

the passage looked as clear as a soap-bubble; you could see yourself in

all the tables, and French-polish yourself on any one of the chairs.

The banisters were bees-waxed; and the very stair-wires made your eyes

wink, they were so glittering.

Mrs. Tibbs was somewhat short of stature, and Mr. Tibbs was by no means

a large man. He had, moreover, very short legs, but, by way of

indemnification, his face was peculiarly long. He was to his wife what

the 0 is in 90—he was of some importance _with_ her—he was nothing

without her. Mrs. Tibbs was always talking. Mr. Tibbs rarely spoke;

but, if it were at any time possible to put in a word, when he should

have said nothing at all, he had that talent. Mrs. Tibbs detested long

stories, and Mr. Tibbs had one, the conclusion of which had never been

heard by his most intimate friends. It always began, ‘I recollect when

I was in the volunteer corps, in eighteen hundred and six,’—but, as he

spoke very slowly and softly, and his better half very quickly and

loudly, he rarely got beyond the introductory sentence. He was a

melancholy specimen of the story-teller. He was the wandering Jew of

Joe Millerism.

Mr. Tibbs enjoyed a small independence from the pension-list—about

43_l._ 15_s._ 10_d._ a year. His father, mother, and five interesting

scions from the same stock, drew a like sum from the revenue of a

grateful country, though for what particular service was never known.

But, as this said independence was not quite sufficient to furnish two

people with _all_ the luxuries of this life, it had occurred to the

busy little spouse of Tibbs, that the best thing she could do with a

legacy of 700_l._, would be to take and furnish a tolerable

house—somewhere in that partially-explored tract of country which lies

between the British Museum, and a remote village called Somers-town—for

the reception of boarders. Great Coram-street was the spot pitched

upon. The house had been furnished accordingly; two female servants and

a boy engaged; and an advertisement inserted in the morning papers,

informing the public that ‘Six individuals would meet with all the

comforts of a cheerful musical home in a select private family,

residing within ten minutes’ walk of’—everywhere. Answers out of number

were received, with all sorts of initials; all the letters of the

alphabet seemed to be seized with a sudden wish to go out boarding and

lodging; voluminous was the correspondence between Mrs. Tibbs and the

applicants; and most profound was the secrecy observed. ‘E.’ didn’t

like this; ‘I.’ couldn’t think of putting up with that; ‘I. O. U.’

didn’t think the terms would suit him; and ‘G. R.’ had never slept in a

French bed. The result, however, was, that three gentlemen became

inmates of Mrs. Tibbs’s house, on terms which were ‘agreeable to all

parties.’ In went the advertisement again, and a lady with her two

daughters, proposed to increase—not their families, but Mrs. Tibbs’s.

‘Charming woman, that Mrs. Maplesone!’ said Mrs. Tibbs, as she and her

spouse were sitting by the fire after breakfast; the gentlemen having

gone out on their several avocations. ‘Charming woman, indeed!’

repeated little Mrs. Tibbs, more by way of soliloquy than anything

else, for she never thought of consulting her husband. ‘And the two

daughters are delightful. We must have some fish to-day; they’ll join

us at dinner for the first time.’

Mr. Tibbs placed the poker at right angles with the fire shovel, and

essayed to speak, but recollected he had nothing to say.

‘The young ladies,’ continued Mrs. T., ‘have kindly volunteered to

bring their own piano.’

Tibbs thought of the volunteer story, but did not venture it.

A bright thought struck him—

‘It’s very likely—’ said he.

‘Pray don’t lean your head against the paper,’ interrupted Mrs. Tibbs;

‘and don’t put your feet on the steel fender; that’s worse.’

Tibbs took his head from the paper, and his feet from the fender, and

proceeded. ‘It’s very likely one of the young ladies may set her cap at

young Mr. Simpson, and you know a marriage—’

‘A what!’ shrieked Mrs. Tibbs. Tibbs modestly repeated his former

suggestion.

‘I beg you won’t mention such a thing,’ said Mrs. T. ‘A marriage,

indeed to rob me of my boarders—no, not for the world.’

Tibbs thought in his own mind that the event was by no means unlikely,

but, as he never argued with his wife, he put a stop to the dialogue,

by observing it was ‘time to go to business.’ He always went out at ten

o’clock in the morning, and returned at five in the afternoon, with an

exceedingly dirty face, and smelling mouldy. Nobody knew what he was,

or where he went; but Mrs. Tibbs used to say with an air of great

importance, that he was engaged in the City.

The Miss Maplesones and their accomplished parent arrived in the course

of the afternoon in a hackney-coach, and accompanied by a most

astonishing number of packages. Trunks, bonnet-boxes, muff-boxes and

parasols, guitar-cases, and parcels of all imaginable shapes, done up

in brown paper, and fastened with pins, filled the passage. Then, there

was such a running up and down with the luggage, such scampering for

warm water for the ladies to wash in, and such a bustle, and confusion,

and heating of servants, and curling-irons, as had never been known in

Great Coram-street before. Little Mrs. Tibbs was quite in her element,

bustling about, talking incessantly, and distributing towels and soap,

like a head nurse in a hospital. The house was not restored to its

usual state of quiet repose, until the ladies were safely shut up in

their respective bedrooms, engaged in the important occupation of

dressing for dinner.

‘Are these gals ’andsome?’ inquired Mr. Simpson of Mr. Septimus Hicks,

another of the boarders, as they were amusing themselves in the

drawing-room, before dinner, by lolling on sofas, and contemplating

their pumps.

‘Don’t know,’ replied Mr. Septimus Hicks, who was a tallish,

white-faced young man, with spectacles, and a black ribbon round his

neck instead of a neckerchief—a most interesting person; a poetical

walker of the hospitals, and a ‘very talented young man.’ He was fond

of ‘lugging’ into conversation all sorts of quotations from Don Juan,

without fettering himself by the propriety of their application; in

which particular he was remarkably independent. The other, Mr. Simpson,

was one of those young men, who are in society what walking gentlemen

are on the stage, only infinitely worse skilled in his vocation than

the most indifferent artist. He was as empty-headed as the great bell

of St. Paul’s; always dressed according to the caricatures published in

the monthly fashion; and spelt Character with a K.

‘I saw a devilish number of parcels in the passage when I came home,’

simpered Mr. Simpson.

‘Materials for the toilet, no doubt,’ rejoined the Don Juan reader.

—‘Much linen, lace, and several pair

Of stockings, slippers, brushes, combs, complete;

With other articles of ladies fair,

To keep them beautiful, or leave them neat.’

‘Is that from Milton?’ inquired Mr. Simpson.

‘No—from Byron,’ returned Mr. Hicks, with a look of contempt. He was

quite sure of his author, because he had never read any other. ‘Hush!

Here come the gals,’ and they both commenced talking in a very loud

key.

‘Mrs. Maplesone and the Miss Maplesones, Mr. Hicks. Mr. Hicks—Mrs.

Maplesone and the Miss Maplesones,’ said Mrs. Tibbs, with a very red

face, for she had been superintending the cooking operations below

stairs, and looked like a wax doll on a sunny day. ‘Mr. Simpson, I beg

your pardon—Mr. Simpson—Mrs. Maplesone and the Miss Maplesones’—and

_vice versâ_. The gentlemen immediately began to slide about with much

politeness, and to look as if they wished their arms had been legs, so

little did they know what to do with them. The ladies smiled,

curtseyed, and glided into chairs, and dived for dropped

pocket-handkerchiefs: the gentlemen leant against two of the

curtain-pegs; Mrs. Tibbs went through an admirable bit of serious

pantomime with a servant who had come up to ask some question about the

fish-sauce; and then the two young ladies looked at each other; and

everybody else appeared to discover something very attractive in the

pattern of the fender.

‘Julia, my love,’ said Mrs. Maplesone to her youngest daughter, in a

tone loud enough for the remainder of the company to hear—‘Julia.’

‘Yes, Ma.’

‘Don’t stoop.’—This was said for the purpose of directing general

attention to Miss Julia’s figure, which was undeniable. Everybody

looked at her, accordingly, and there was another pause.

‘We had the most uncivil hackney-coachman to-day, you can imagine,’

said Mrs. Maplesone to Mrs. Tibbs, in a confidential tone.

‘Dear me!’ replied the hostess, with an air of great commiseration. She

couldn’t say more, for the servant again appeared at the door, and

commenced telegraphing most earnestly to her ‘Missis.’

‘I think hackney-coachmen generally _are_ uncivil,’ said Mr. Hicks in

his most insinuating tone.

‘Positively I think they are,’ replied Mrs. Maplesone, as if the idea

had never struck her before.

‘And cabmen, too,’ said Mr. Simpson. This remark was a failure, for no

one intimated, by word or sign, the slightest knowledge of the manners

and customs of cabmen.

‘Robinson, what _do_ you want?’ said Mrs. Tibbs to the servant, who, by

way of making her presence known to her mistress, had been giving

sundry hems and sniffs outside the door during the preceding five

minutes.

‘Please, ma’am, master wants his clean things,’ replied the servant,

taken off her guard. The two young men turned their faces to the

window, and ‘went off’ like a couple of bottles of ginger-beer; the

ladies put their handkerchiefs to their mouths; and little Mrs. Tibbs

bustled out of the room to give Tibbs his clean linen,—and the servant

warning.

Mr. Calton, the remaining boarder, shortly afterwards made his

appearance, and proved a surprising promoter of the conversation. Mr.

Calton was a superannuated beau—an old boy. He used to say of himself

that although his features were not regularly handsome, they were

striking. They certainly were. It was impossible to look at his face

without being reminded of a chubby street-door knocker, half-lion

half-monkey; and the comparison might be extended to his whole

character and conversation. He had stood still, while everything else

had been moving. He never originated a conversation, or started an

idea; but if any commonplace topic were broached, or, to pursue the

comparison, if anybody _lifted him up_, he would hammer away with

surprising rapidity. He had the tic-douloureux occasionally, and then

he might be said to be muffled, because he did not make quite as much

noise as at other times, when he would go on prosing, rat-tat-tat the

same thing over and over again. He had never been married; but he was

still on the look-out for a wife with money. He had a life interest

worth about 300_l._ a year—he was exceedingly vain, and inordinately

selfish. He had acquired the reputation of being the very pink of

politeness, and he walked round the park, and up Regent-street, every

day.

This respectable personage had made up his mind to render himself

exceedingly agreeable to Mrs. Maplesone—indeed, the desire of being as

amiable as possible extended itself to the whole party; Mrs. Tibbs

having considered it an admirable little bit of management to represent

to the gentlemen that she had _some_ reason to believe the ladies were

fortunes, and to hint to the ladies, that all the gentlemen were

‘eligible.’ A little flirtation, she thought, might keep her house

full, without leading to any other result.

Mrs. Maplesone was an enterprising widow of about fifty: shrewd,

scheming, and good-looking. She was amiably anxious on behalf of her

daughters; in proof whereof she used to remark, that she would have no

objection to marry again, if it would benefit her dear girls—she could

have no other motive. The ‘dear girls’ themselves were not at all

insensible to the merits of ‘a good establishment.’ One of them was

twenty-five; the other, three years younger. They had been at different

watering-places, for four seasons; they had gambled at libraries, read

books in balconies, sold at fancy fairs, danced at assemblies, talked

sentiment—in short, they had done all that industrious girls could

do—but, as yet, to no purpose.

‘What a magnificent dresser Mr. Simpson is!’ whispered Matilda

Maplesone to her sister Julia.

‘Splendid!’ returned the youngest. The magnificent individual alluded

to wore a maroon-coloured dress-coat, with a velvet collar and cuffs of

the same tint—very like that which usually invests the form of the

distinguished unknown who condescends to play the ‘swell’ in the

pantomime at ‘Richardson’s Show.’

‘What whiskers!’ said Miss Julia.

‘Charming!’ responded her sister; ‘and what hair!’ His hair was like a

wig, and distinguished by that insinuating wave which graces the

shining locks of those _chef-d’oeuvres_ of art surmounting the waxen

images in Bartellot’s window in Regent-street; his whiskers meeting

beneath his chin, seemed strings wherewith to tie it on, ere science

had rendered them unnecessary by her patent invisible springs.

‘Dinner’s on the table, ma’am, if you please,’ said the boy, who now

appeared for the first time, in a revived black coat of his master’s.

‘Oh! Mr. Calton, will you lead Mrs. Maplesone?—Thank you.’ Mr. Simpson

offered his arm to Miss Julia; Mr. Septimus Hicks escorted the lovely

Matilda; and the procession proceeded to the dining-room. Mr. Tibbs was

introduced, and Mr. Tibbs bobbed up and down to the three ladies like a

figure in a Dutch clock, with a powerful spring in the middle of his

body, and then dived rapidly into his seat at the bottom of the table,

delighted to screen himself behind a soup-tureen, which he could just

see over, and that was all. The boarders were seated, a lady and

gentleman alternately, like the layers of bread and meat in a plate of

sandwiches; and then Mrs. Tibbs directed James to take off the covers.

Salmon, lobster-sauce, giblet-soup, and the usual accompaniments were

discovered: potatoes like petrifactions, and bits of toasted bread, the

shape and size of blank dice.

‘Soup for Mrs. Maplesone, my dear,’ said the bustling Mrs. Tibbs. She

always called her husband ‘my dear’ before company. Tibbs, who had been

eating his bread, and calculating how long it would be before he should

get any fish, helped the soup in a hurry, made a small island on the

table-cloth, and put his glass upon it, to hide it from his wife.

‘Miss Julia, shall I assist you to some fish?’

‘If you please—very little—oh! plenty, thank you’ (a bit about the size

of a walnut put upon the plate).

‘Julia is a _very_ little eater,’ said Mrs. Maplesone to Mr. Calton.

The knocker gave a single rap. He was busy eating the fish with his

eyes: so he only ejaculated, ‘Ah!’

‘My dear,’ said Mrs. Tibbs to her spouse after every one else had been

helped, ‘what do _you_ take?’ The inquiry was accompanied with a look

intimating that he mustn’t say fish, because there was not much left.

Tibbs thought the frown referred to the island on the table-cloth; he

therefore coolly replied, ‘Why—I’ll take a little—fish, I think.’

‘Did you say fish, my dear?’ (another frown).

‘Yes, dear,’ replied the villain, with an expression of acute hunger

depicted in his countenance. The tears almost started to Mrs. Tibbs’s

eyes, as she helped her ‘wretch of a husband,’ as she inwardly called

him, to the last eatable bit of salmon on the dish.

‘James, take this to your master, and take away your master’s knife.’

This was deliberate revenge, as Tibbs never could eat fish without one.

He was, however, constrained to chase small particles of salmon round

and round his plate with a piece of bread and a fork, the number of

successful attempts being about one in seventeen.

‘Take away, James,’ said Mrs. Tibbs, as Tibbs swallowed the fourth

mouthful—and away went the plates like lightning.

‘I’ll take a bit of bread, James,’ said the poor ‘master of the house,’

more hungry than ever.

‘Never mind your master now, James,’ said Mrs. Tibbs, ‘see about the

meat.’ This was conveyed in the tone in which ladies usually give

admonitions to servants in company, that is to say, a low one; but

which, like a stage whisper, from its peculiar emphasis, is most

distinctly heard by everybody present.

A pause ensued, before the table was replenished—a sort of parenthesis

in which Mr. Simpson, Mr. Calton, and Mr. Hicks, produced respectively

a bottle of sauterne, bucellas, and sherry, and took wine with

everybody—except Tibbs. No one ever thought of him.

Between the fish and an intimated sirloin, there was a prolonged

interval.

Here was an opportunity for Mr. Hicks. He could not resist the

singularly appropriate quotation—

‘But beef is rare within these oxless isles;

Goats’ flesh there is, no doubt, and kid, and mutton,

And when a holiday upon them smiles,

A joint upon their barbarous spits they put on.’

‘Very ungentlemanly behaviour,’ thought little Mrs. Tibbs, ‘to talk in

that way.’

‘Ah,’ said Mr. Calton, filling his glass. ‘Tom Moore is my poet.’

‘And mine,’ said Mrs. Maplesone.

‘And mine,’ said Miss Julia.

‘And mine,’ added Mr. Simpson.

‘Look at his compositions,’ resumed the knocker.

‘To be sure,’ said Simpson, with confidence.

‘Look at Don Juan,’ replied Mr. Septimus Hicks.

‘Julia’s letter,’ suggested Miss Matilda.

‘Can anything be grander than the Fire Worshippers?’ inquired Miss

Julia.

‘To be sure,’ said Simpson.

‘Or Paradise and the Peri,’ said the old beau.

‘Yes; or Paradise and the Peer,’ repeated Simpson, who thought he was

getting through it capitally.

‘It’s all very well,’ replied Mr. Septimus Hicks, who, as we have

before hinted, never had read anything but Don Juan. ‘Where will you

find anything finer than the description of the siege, at the

commencement of the seventh canto?’

‘Talking of a siege,’ said Tibbs, with a mouthful of bread—‘when I was

in the volunteer corps, in eighteen hundred and six, our commanding

officer was Sir Charles Rampart; and one day, when we were exercising

on the ground on which the London University now stands, he says, says

he, Tibbs (calling me from the ranks), Tibbs—’

‘Tell your master, James,’ interrupted Mrs. Tibbs, in an awfully

distinct tone, ‘tell your master if he _won’t_ carve those fowls, to

send them to me.’ The discomfited volunteer instantly set to work, and

carved the fowls almost as expeditiously as his wife operated on the

haunch of mutton. Whether he ever finished the story is not known but,

if he did, nobody heard it.

As the ice was now broken, and the new inmates more at home, every

member of the company felt more at ease. Tibbs himself most certainly

did, because he went to sleep immediately after dinner. Mr. Hicks and

the ladies discoursed most eloquently about poetry, and the theatres,

and Lord Chesterfield’s Letters; and Mr. Calton followed up what

everybody said, with continuous double knocks. Mrs. Tibbs highly

approved of every observation that fell from Mrs. Maplesone; and as Mr.

Simpson sat with a smile upon his face and said ‘Yes,’ or ‘Certainly,’

at intervals of about four minutes each, he received full credit for

understanding what was going forward. The gentlemen rejoined the ladies

in the drawing-room very shortly after they had left the

dining-parlour. Mrs. Maplesone and Mr. Calton played cribbage, and the

‘young people’ amused themselves with music and conversation. The Miss

Maplesones sang the most fascinating duets, and accompanied themselves

on guitars, ornamented with bits of ethereal blue ribbon. Mr. Simpson

put on a pink waistcoat, and said he was in raptures; and Mr. Hicks

felt in the seventh heaven of poetry or the seventh canto of Don

Juan—it was the same thing to him. Mrs. Tibbs was quite charmed with

the newcomers; and Mr. Tibbs spent the evening in his usual way—he went

to sleep, and woke up, and went to sleep again, and woke at

supper-time.

* * * * *

We are not about to adopt the licence of novel-writers, and to let

‘years roll on;’ but we will take the liberty of requesting the reader

to suppose that six months have elapsed, since the dinner we have

described, and that Mrs. Tibbs’s boarders have, during that period,

sang, and danced, and gone to theatres and exhibitions, together, as

ladies and gentlemen, wherever they board, often do. And we will beg

them, the period we have mentioned having elapsed, to imagine farther,

that Mr. Septimus Hicks received, in his own bedroom (a front attic),

at an early hour one morning, a note from Mr. Calton, requesting the

favour of seeing him, as soon as convenient to himself, in his

(Calton’s) dressing-room on the second-floor back.

‘Tell Mr. Calton I’ll come down directly,’ said Mr. Septimus to the

boy. ‘Stop—is Mr. Calton unwell?’ inquired this excited walker of

hospitals, as he put on a bed-furniture-looking dressing-gown.

‘Not as I knows on, sir,’ replied the boy. ‘ Please, sir, he looked

rather rum, as it might be.’

‘Ah, that’s no proof of his being ill,’ returned Hicks, unconsciously.

‘Very well: I’ll be down directly.’ Downstairs ran the boy with the

message, and down went the excited Hicks himself, almost as soon as the

message was delivered. ‘Tap, tap.’ ‘Come in.’—Door opens, and discovers

Mr. Calton sitting in an easy chair. Mutual shakes of the hand

exchanged, and Mr. Septimus Hicks motioned to a seat. A short pause.

Mr. Hicks coughed, and Mr. Calton took a pinch of snuff. It was one of

those interviews where neither party knows what to say. Mr. Septimus

Hicks broke silence.

‘I received a note—’ he said, very tremulously, in a voice like a Punch

with a cold.

‘Yes,’ returned the other, ‘you did.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Yes.’

Now, although this dialogue must have been satisfactory, both gentlemen

felt there was something more important to be said; therefore they did

as most men in such a situation would have done—they looked at the

table with a determined aspect. The conversation had been opened,

however, and Mr. Calton had made up his mind to continue it with a

regular double knock. He always spoke very pompously.

‘Hicks,’ said he, ‘I have sent for you, in consequence of certain

arrangements which are pending in this house, connected with a

marriage.’

‘With a marriage!’ gasped Hicks, compared with whose expression of

countenance, Hamlet’s, when he sees his father’s ghost, is pleasing and

composed.

‘With a marriage,’ returned the knocker. ‘I have sent for you to prove

the great confidence I can repose in you.’

‘And will you betray me?’ eagerly inquired Hicks, who in his alarm had

even forgotten to quote.

‘_I_ betray _you_! Won’t _you_ betray_ me_?’

‘Never: no one shall know, to my dying day, that you had a hand in the

business,’ responded the agitated Hicks, with an inflamed countenance,

and his hair standing on end as if he were on the stool of an

electrifying machine in full operation.

‘People must know that, some time or other—within a year, I imagine,’

said Mr. Calton, with an air of great self-complacency. ‘We _may_ have

a family.’

‘_We_!—That won’t affect you, surely?’

‘The devil it won’t!’

‘No! how can it?’ said the bewildered Hicks. Calton was too much

inwrapped in the contemplation of his happiness to see the equivoque

between Hicks and himself; and threw himself back in his chair. ‘Oh,

Matilda!’ sighed the antique beau, in a lack-a-daisical voice, and

applying his right hand a little to the left of the fourth button of

his waistcoat, counting from the bottom. ‘Oh, Matilda!’

‘What Matilda?’ inquired Hicks, starting up.

‘Matilda Maplesone,’ responded the other, doing the same.

‘I marry her to-morrow morning,’ said Hicks.

‘It’s false,’ rejoined his companion: ‘I marry her!’

‘You marry her?’

‘I marry her!’

‘You marry Matilda Maplesone?’

‘Matilda Maplesone.’

‘_Miss_ Maplesone marry _you_?’

‘Miss Maplesone! No; Mrs. Maplesone.’

‘Good Heaven!’ said Hicks, falling into his chair: ‘You marry the

mother, and I the daughter!’

‘Most extraordinary circumstance!’ replied Mr. Calton, ‘and rather

inconvenient too; for the fact is, that owing to Matilda’s wishing to

keep her intention secret from her daughters until the ceremony had

taken place, she doesn’t like applying to any of her friends to give

her away. I entertain an objection to making the affair known to my

acquaintance just now; and the consequence is, that I sent to you to

know whether you’d oblige me by acting as father.’

‘I should have been most happy, I assure you,’ said Hicks, in a tone of

condolence; ‘but, you see, I shall be acting as bridegroom. One

character is frequently a consequence of the other; but it is not usual

to act in both at the same time. There’s Simpson—I have no doubt he’ll

do it for you.’

‘I don’t like to ask him,’ replied Calton, ‘he’s such a donkey.’

Mr. Septimus Hicks looked up at the ceiling, and down at the floor; at

last an idea struck him. ‘Let the man of the house, Tibbs, be the

father,’ he suggested; and then he quoted, as peculiarly applicable to

Tibbs and the pair—

‘Oh Powers of Heaven! what dark eyes meets she there?

’Tis—’tis her father’s—fixed upon the pair.’

‘The idea has struck me already,’ said Mr. Calton: ‘but, you see,

Matilda, for what reason I know not, is very anxious that Mrs. Tibbs

should know nothing about it, till it’s all over. It’s a natural

delicacy, after all, you know.’

‘He’s the best-natured little man in existence, if you manage him

properly,’ said Mr. Septimus Hicks. ‘Tell him not to mention it to his

wife, and assure him she won’t mind it, and he’ll do it directly. My

marriage is to be a secret one, on account of the mother and _my_

father; therefore he must be enjoined to secrecy.’

A small double knock, like a presumptuous single one, was that instant

heard at the street-door. It was Tibbs; it could be no one else; for no

one else occupied five minutes in rubbing his shoes. He had been out to

pay the baker’s bill.

‘Mr. Tibbs,’ called Mr. Calton in a very bland tone, looking over the

banisters.

‘Sir!’ replied he of the dirty face.

‘Will you have the kindness to step up-stairs for a moment?’

‘Certainly, sir,’ said Tibbs, delighted to be taken notice of. The

bedroom-door was carefully closed, and Tibbs, having put his hat on the

floor (as most timid men do), and been accommodated with a seat, looked

as astounded as if he were suddenly summoned before the familiars of

the Inquisition.

‘A rather unpleasant occurrence, Mr. Tibbs,’ said Calton, in a very

portentous manner, ‘obliges me to consult you, and to beg you will not

communicate what I am about to say, to your wife.’

Tibbs acquiesced, wondering in his own mind what the deuce the other

could have done, and imagining that at least he must have broken the

best decanters.

Mr. Calton resumed; ‘I am placed, Mr. Tibbs, in rather an unpleasant

situation.’

Tibbs looked at Mr. Septimus Hicks, as if he thought Mr. H.’s being in

the immediate vicinity of his fellow-boarder might constitute the

unpleasantness of his situation; but as he did not exactly know what to

say, he merely ejaculated the monosyllable ‘Lor!’

‘Now,’ continued the knocker, ‘let me beg you will exhibit no

manifestations of surprise, which may be overheard by the domestics,

when I tell you—command your feelings of astonishment—that two inmates

of this house intend to be married to-morrow morning.’ And he drew back

his chair, several feet, to perceive the effect of the unlooked-for

announcement.

If Tibbs had rushed from the room, staggered down-stairs, and fainted

in the passage—if he had instantaneously jumped out of the window into

the mews behind the house, in an agony of surprise—his behaviour would

have been much less inexplicable to Mr. Calton than it was, when he put

his hands into his inexpressible-pockets, and said with a half-chuckle,

‘Just so.’

‘You are not surprised, Mr. Tibbs?’ inquired Mr. Calton.

‘Bless you, no, sir,’ returned Tibbs; ‘after all, its very natural.

When two young people get together, you know—’

‘Certainly, certainly,’ said Calton, with an indescribable air of

self-satisfaction.

‘You don’t think it’s at all an out-of-the-way affair then?’ asked Mr.

Septimus Hicks, who had watched the countenance of Tibbs in mute

astonishment.

‘No, sir,’ replied Tibbs; ‘I was just the same at his age.’ He actually

smiled when he said this.

‘How devilish well I must carry my years!’ thought the delighted old

beau, knowing he was at least ten years older than Tibbs at that

moment.

‘Well, then, to come to the point at once,’ he continued, ‘I have to

ask you whether you will object to act as father on the occasion?’

‘Certainly not,’ replied Tibbs; still without evincing an atom of

surprise.

‘You will not?’

‘Decidedly not,’ reiterated Tibbs, still as calm as a pot of porter

with the head off.

Mr. Calton seized the hand of the petticoat-governed little man, and

vowed eternal friendship from that hour. Hicks, who was all admiration

and surprise, did the same.

‘Now, confess,’ asked Mr. Calton of Tibbs, as he picked up his hat,

‘were you not a little surprised?’

‘I b’lieve you!’ replied that illustrious person, holding up one hand;

‘I b’lieve you! When I first heard of it.’

‘So sudden,’ said Septimus Hicks.

‘So strange to ask _me_, you know,’ said Tibbs.

‘So odd altogether!’ said the superannuated love-maker; and then all

three laughed.

‘I say,’ said Tibbs, shutting the door which he had previously opened,

and giving full vent to a hitherto corked-up giggle, ‘what bothers me

is, what _will_ his father say?’

Mr. Septimus Hicks looked at Mr. Calton.

‘Yes; but the best of it is,’ said the latter, giggling in his turn, ‘I

haven’t got a father—he! he! he!’

‘You haven’t got a father. No; but _he_ has,’ said Tibbs.

‘_Who_ has?’ inquired Septimus Hicks.

‘Why, _him_.’

‘Him, who? Do you know my secret? Do you mean me?’

‘You! No; you know who I mean,’ returned Tibbs with a knowing wink.

‘For Heaven’s sake, whom do you mean?’ inquired Mr. Calton, who, like

Septimus Hicks, was all but out of his senses at the strange confusion.

‘Why Mr. Simpson, of course,’ replied Tibbs; ‘who else could I mean?’

‘I see it all,’ said the Byron-quoter; ‘Simpson marries Julia Maplesone

to-morrow morning!’

‘Undoubtedly,’ replied Tibbs, thoroughly satisfied, ‘of course he

does.’

It would require the pencil of Hogarth to illustrate—our feeble pen is

inadequate to describe—the expression which the countenances of Mr.

Calton and Mr. Septimus Hicks respectively assumed, at this unexpected

announcement. Equally impossible is it to describe, although perhaps it

is easier for our lady readers to imagine, what arts the three ladies

could have used, so completely to entangle their separate partners.

Whatever they were, however, they were successful. The mother was

perfectly aware of the intended marriage of both daughters; and the

young ladies were equally acquainted with the intention of their

estimable parent. They agreed, however, that it would have a much

better appearance if each feigned ignorance of the other’s engagement;

and it was equally desirable that all the marriages should take place

on the same day, to prevent the discovery of one clandestine alliance,

operating prejudicially on the others. Hence, the mystification of Mr.

Calton and Mr. Septimus Hicks, and the pre-engagement of the unwary

Tibbs.

On the following morning, Mr. Septimus Hicks was united to Miss Matilda

Maplesone. Mr. Simpson also entered into a ‘holy alliance’ with Miss

Julia; Tibbs acting as father, ‘his first appearance in that

character.’ Mr. Calton, not being quite so eager as the two young men,

was rather struck by the double discovery; and as he had found some

difficulty in getting any one to give the lady away, it occurred to him

that the best mode of obviating the inconvenience would be not to take

her at all. The lady, however, ‘appealed,’ as her counsel said on the

trial of the cause, _Maplesone_ v. _Calton_, for a breach of promise,

‘with a broken heart, to the outraged laws of her country.’ She

recovered damages to the amount of 1,000_l._ which the unfortunate

knocker was compelled to pay. Mr. Septimus Hicks having walked the

hospitals, took it into his head to walk off altogether. His injured

wife is at present residing with her mother at Boulogne. Mr. Simpson,

having the misfortune to lose his wife six weeks after marriage (by her

eloping with an officer during his temporary sojourn in the Fleet

Prison, in consequence of his inability to discharge her little

mantua-maker’s bill), and being disinherited by his father, who died

soon afterwards, was fortunate enough to obtain a permanent engagement

at a fashionable haircutter’s; hairdressing being a science to which he

had frequently directed his attention. In this situation he had

necessarily many opportunities of making himself acquainted with the

habits, and style of thinking, of the exclusive portion of the nobility

of this kingdom. To this fortunate circumstance are we indebted for the

production of those brilliant efforts of genius, his fashionable

novels, which so long as good taste, unsullied by exaggeration, cant,

and quackery, continues to exist, cannot fail to instruct and amuse the

thinking portion of the community.

It only remains to add, that this complication of disorders completely

deprived poor Mrs. Tibbs of all her inmates, except the one whom she

could have best spared—her husband. That wretched little man returned

home, on the day of the wedding, in a state of partial intoxication;

and, under the influence of wine, excitement, and despair, actually

dared to brave the anger of his wife. Since that ill-fated hour he has

constantly taken his meals in the kitchen, to which apartment, it is

understood, his witticisms will be in future confined: a turn-up

bedstead having been conveyed there by Mrs. Tibbs’s order for his

exclusive accommodation. It is possible that he will be enabled to

finish, in that seclusion, his story of the volunteers.

The advertisement has again appeared in the morning papers. Results

must be reserved for another chapter.

CHAPTER THE SECOND.

‘Well!’ said little Mrs. Tibbs to herself, as she sat in the front

parlour of the Coram-street mansion one morning, mending a piece of

stair-carpet off the first Landings;—‘Things have not turned out so

badly, either, and if I only get a favourable answer to the

advertisement, we shall be full again.’

Mrs. Tibbs resumed her occupation of making worsted lattice-work in the

carpet, anxiously listening to the twopenny postman, who was hammering

his way down the street, at the rate of a penny a knock. The house was

as quiet as possible. There was only one low sound to be heard—it was

the unhappy Tibbs cleaning the gentlemen’s boots in the back kitchen,

and accompanying himself with a buzzing noise, in wretched mockery of

humming a tune.

The postman drew near the house. He paused—so did Mrs. Tibbs. A knock—a

bustle—a letter—post-paid.

‘T. I. presents compt. to I. T. and T. I. begs To say that i see the

advertisement And she will Do Herself the pleasure of calling On you at

12 o’clock to-morrow morning.

‘T. I. as To apologise to I. T. for the shortness Of the notice But i

hope it will not unconvenience you.

‘I remain yours Truly

‘Wednesday evening.’

Little Mrs. Tibbs perused the document, over and over again; and the

more she read it, the more was she confused by the mixture of the first

and third person; the substitution of the ‘i’ for the ‘T. I.;’ and the

transition from the ‘I. T.’ to the ‘You.’ The writing looked like a

skein of thread in a tangle, and the note was ingeniously folded into a

perfect square, with the direction squeezed up into the right-hand

corner, as if it were ashamed of itself. The back of the epistle was

pleasingly ornamented with a large red wafer, which, with the addition

of divers ink-stains, bore a marvellous resemblance to a black beetle

trodden upon. One thing, however, was perfectly clear to the perplexed

Mrs. Tibbs. Somebody was to call at twelve. The drawing-room was

forthwith dusted for the third time that morning; three or four chairs

were pulled out of their places, and a corresponding number of books

carefully upset, in order that there might be a due absence of

formality. Down went the piece of stair-carpet before noticed, and up

ran Mrs. Tibbs ‘to make herself tidy.’

The clock of New Saint Pancras Church struck twelve, and the Foundling,

with laudable politeness, did the same ten minutes afterwards, Saint

something else struck the quarter, and then there arrived a single lady

with a double knock, in a pelisse the colour of the interior of a

damson pie; a bonnet of the same, with a regular conservatory of

artificial flowers; a white veil, and a green parasol, with a cobweb

border.

The visitor (who was very fat and red-faced) was shown into the

drawing-room; Mrs. Tibbs presented herself, and the negotiation

commenced.

‘I called in consequence of an advertisement,’ said the stranger, in a

voice as if she had been playing a set of Pan’s pipes for a fortnight

without leaving off.

‘Yes!’ said Mrs. Tibbs, rubbing her hands very slowly, and looking the

applicant full in the face—two things she always did on such occasions.

‘Money isn’t no object whatever to me,’ said the lady, ‘so much as

living in a state of retirement and obtrusion.’

Mrs. Tibbs, as a matter of course, acquiesced in such an exceedingly

natural desire.

‘I am constantly attended by a medical man,’ resumed the pelisse

wearer; ‘I have been a shocking unitarian for some time—I, indeed, have

had very little peace since the death of Mr. Bloss.’

Mrs. Tibbs looked at the relict of the departed Bloss, and thought he

must have had very little peace in his time. Of course she could not

say so; so she looked very sympathising.

‘I shall be a good deal of trouble to you,’ said Mrs. Bloss; ‘but, for

that trouble I am willing to pay. I am going through a course of

treatment which renders attention necessary. I have one mutton-chop in

bed at half-past eight, and another at ten, every morning.’

Mrs. Tibbs, as in duty bound, expressed the pity she felt for anybody

placed in such a distressing situation; and the carnivorous Mrs. Bloss

proceeded to arrange the various preliminaries with wonderful despatch.

‘Now mind,’ said that lady, after terms were arranged; ‘I am to have

the second-floor front, for my bed-room?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘And you’ll find room for my little servant Agnes?’

‘Oh! certainly.’

‘And I can have one of the cellars in the area for my bottled porter.’

‘With the greatest pleasure;—James shall get it ready for you by

Saturday.’

‘And I’ll join the company at the breakfast-table on Sunday morning,’

said Mrs. Bloss. ‘I shall get up on purpose.’

‘Very well,’ returned Mrs. Tibbs, in her most amiable tone; for

satisfactory references had ‘been given and required,’ and it was quite

certain that the new-comer had plenty of money. ‘It’s rather singular,’

continued Mrs. Tibbs, with what was meant for a most bewitching smile,

‘that we have a gentleman now with us, who is in a very delicate state

of health—a Mr. Gobler.—His apartment is the back drawing-room.’

‘The next room?’ inquired Mrs. Bloss.

‘The next room,’ repeated the hostess.

‘How very promiscuous!’ ejaculated the widow.

‘He hardly ever gets up,’ said Mrs. Tibbs in a whisper.

‘Lor!’ cried Mrs. Bloss, in an equally low tone.

‘And when he is up,’ said Mrs. Tibbs, ‘we never can persuade him to go

to bed again.’

‘Dear me!’ said the astonished Mrs. Bloss, drawing her chair nearer

Mrs. Tibbs. ‘What is his complaint?’

‘Why, the fact is,’ replied Mrs. Tibbs, with a most communicative air,

‘he has no stomach whatever.’

‘No what?’ inquired Mrs. Bloss, with a look of the most indescribable

alarm.

‘No stomach,’ repeated Mrs. Tibbs, with a shake of the head.

‘Lord bless us! what an extraordinary case!’ gasped Mrs. Bloss, as if

she understood the communication in its literal sense, and was

astonished at a gentleman without a stomach finding it necessary to

board anywhere.

‘When I say he has no stomach,’ explained the chatty little Mrs. Tibbs,

‘I mean that his digestion is so much impaired, and his interior so

deranged, that his stomach is not of the least use to him;—in fact,

it’s an inconvenience.’

‘Never heard such a case in my life!’ exclaimed Mrs. Bloss. ‘Why, he’s

worse than I am.’

‘Oh, yes!’ replied Mrs. Tibbs;—‘certainly.’ She said this with great

confidence, for the damson pelisse suggested that Mrs. Bloss, at all

events, was not suffering under Mr. Gobler’s complaint.

‘You have quite incited my curiosity,’ said Mrs. Bloss, as she rose to

depart. ‘How I long to see him!’

‘He generally comes down, once a week,’ replied Mrs. Tibbs; ‘I dare say

you’ll see him on Sunday.’ With this consolatory promise Mrs. Bloss was

obliged to be contented. She accordingly walked slowly down the stairs,

detailing her complaints all the way; and Mrs. Tibbs followed her,

uttering an exclamation of compassion at every step. James (who looked

very gritty, for he was cleaning the knives) fell up the

kitchen-stairs, and opened the street-door; and, after mutual

farewells, Mrs. Bloss slowly departed, down the shady side of the

street.

It is almost superfluous to say, that the lady whom we have just shown

out at the street-door (and whom the two female servants are now

inspecting from the second-floor windows) was exceedingly vulgar,

ignorant, and selfish. Her deceased better-half had been an eminent

cork-cutter, in which capacity he had amassed a decent fortune. He had

no relative but his nephew, and no friend but his cook. The former had

the insolence one morning to ask for the loan of fifteen pounds; and,

by way of retaliation, he married the latter next day; he made a will

immediately afterwards, containing a burst of honest indignation

against his nephew (who supported himself and two sisters on 100_l._ a

year), and a bequest of his whole property to his wife. He felt ill

after breakfast, and died after dinner. There is a mantelpiece-looking

tablet in a civic parish church, setting forth his virtues, and

deploring his loss. He never dishonoured a bill, or gave away a

halfpenny.

The relict and sole executrix of this noble-minded man was an odd

mixture of shrewdness and simplicity, liberality and meanness. Bred up

as she had been, she knew no mode of living so agreeable as a

boarding-house: and having nothing to do, and nothing to wish for, she

naturally imagined she must be ill—an impression which was most

assiduously promoted by her medical attendant, Dr. Wosky, and her

handmaid Agnes: both of whom, doubtless for good reasons, encouraged

all her extravagant notions.

Since the catastrophe recorded in the last chapter, Mrs. Tibbs had been

very shy of young-lady boarders. Her present inmates were all lords of

the creation, and she availed herself of the opportunity of their

assemblage at the dinner-table, to announce the expected arrival of

Mrs. Bloss. The gentlemen received the communication with stoical

indifference, and Mrs. Tibbs devoted all her energies to prepare for

the reception of the valetudinarian. The second-floor front was

scrubbed, and washed, and flannelled, till the wet went through to the

drawing-room ceiling. Clean white counterpanes, and curtains, and

napkins, water-bottles as clear as crystal, blue jugs, and mahogany

furniture, added to the splendour, and increased the comfort, of the

apartment. The warming-pan was in constant requisition, and a fire

lighted in the room every day. The chattels of Mrs. Bloss were

forwarded by instalments. First, there came a large hamper of

Guinness’s stout, and an umbrella; then, a train of trunks; then, a

pair of clogs and a bandbox; then, an easy chair with an air-cushion;

then, a variety of suspicious-looking packages; and—‘though last not

least’—Mrs. Bloss and Agnes: the latter in a cherry-coloured merino

dress, open-work stockings, and shoes with sandals: like a disguised

Columbine.

The installation of the Duke of Wellington, as Chancellor of the

University of Oxford, was nothing, in point of bustle and turmoil, to

the installation of Mrs. Bloss in her new quarters. True, there was no

bright doctor of civil law to deliver a classical address on the

occasion; but there were several other old women present, who spoke

quite as much to the purpose, and understood themselves equally well.

The chop-eater was so fatigued with the process of removal that she

declined leaving her room until the following morning; so a

mutton-chop, pickle, a pill, a pint bottle of stout, and other

medicines, were carried up-stairs for her consumption.

‘Why, what _do_ you think, ma’am?’ inquired the inquisitive Agnes of

her mistress, after they had been in the house some three hours; ‘what

_do_ you think, ma’am? the lady of the house is married.’

‘Married!’ said Mrs. Bloss, taking the pill and a draught of

Guinness—‘married! Unpossible!’

‘She is indeed, ma’am,’ returned the Columbine; ‘and her husband,

ma’am, lives—he—he—he—lives in the kitchen, ma’am.’

‘In the kitchen!’

‘Yes, ma’am: and he—he—he—the housemaid says, he never goes into the

parlour except on Sundays; and that Ms. Tibbs makes him clean the

gentlemen’s boots; and that he cleans the windows, too, sometimes; and

that one morning early, when he was in the front balcony cleaning the

drawing-room windows, he called out to a gentleman on the opposite side

of the way, who used to live here—“Ah! Mr. Calton, sir, how are you?”’

Here the attendant laughed till Mrs. Bloss was in serious apprehension

of her chuckling herself into a fit.

‘Well, I never!’ said Mrs. Bloss.

‘Yes. And please, ma’am, the servants gives him gin-and-water

sometimes; and then he cries, and says he hates his wife and the

boarders, and wants to tickle them.’

‘Tickle the boarders!’ exclaimed Mrs. Bloss, seriously alarmed.

‘No, ma’am, not the boarders, the servants.’

‘Oh, is that all!’ said Mrs. Bloss, quite satisfied.

‘He wanted to kiss me as I came up the kitchen-stairs, just now,’ said

Agnes, indignantly; ‘but I gave it him—a little wretch!’

This intelligence was but too true. A long course of snubbing and

neglect; his days spent in the kitchen, and his nights in the turn-up

bedstead, had completely broken the little spirit that the unfortunate

volunteer had ever possessed. He had no one to whom he could detail his

injuries but the servants, and they were almost of necessity his chosen

confidants. It is no less strange than true, however, that the little

weaknesses which he had incurred, most probably during his military

career, seemed to increase as his comforts diminished. He was actually

a sort of journeyman Giovanni of the basement story.

The next morning, being Sunday, breakfast was laid in the front parlour

at ten o’clock. Nine was the usual time, but the family always

breakfasted an hour later on sabbath. Tibbs enrobed himself in his

Sunday costume—a black coat, and exceedingly short, thin trousers; with

a very large white waistcoat, white stockings and cravat, and Blucher

boots—and mounted to the parlour aforesaid. Nobody had come down, and

he amused himself by drinking the contents of the milkpot with a

teaspoon.

A pair of slippers were heard descending the stairs. Tibbs flew to a

chair; and a stern-looking man, of about fifty, with very little hair

on his head, and a Sunday paper in his hand, entered the room.

‘Good morning, Mr. Evenson,’ said Tibbs, very humbly, with something

between a nod and a bow.

‘How do you do, Mr. Tibbs?’ replied he of the slippers, as he sat

himself down, and began to read his paper without saying another word.

‘Is Mr. Wisbottle in town to-day, do you know, sir?’ inquired Tibbs,

just for the sake of saying something.

‘I should think he was,’ replied the stern gentleman. ‘He was whistling

“The Light Guitar,” in the next room to mine, at five o’clock this

morning.’

‘He’s very fond of whistling,’ said Tibbs, with a slight smirk.

‘Yes—I ain’t,’ was the laconic reply.

Mr. John Evenson was in the receipt of an independent income, arising

chiefly from various houses he owned in the different suburbs. He was

very morose and discontented. He was a thorough radical, and used to

attend a great variety of public meetings, for the express purpose of

finding fault with everything that was proposed. Mr. Wisbottle, on the

other hand, was a high Tory. He was a clerk in the Woods and Forests

Office, which he considered rather an aristocratic employment; he knew

the peerage by heart, and, could tell you, off-hand, where any

illustrious personage lived. He had a good set of teeth, and a capital

tailor. Mr. Evenson looked on all these qualifications with profound

contempt; and the consequence was that the two were always disputing,

much to the edification of the rest of the house. It should be added,

that, in addition to his partiality for whistling, Mr. Wisbottle had a

great idea of his singing powers. There were two other boarders,

besides the gentleman in the back drawing-room—Mr. Alfred Tomkins and

Mr. Frederick O’Bleary. Mr. Tomkins was a clerk in a wine-house; he was

a connoisseur in paintings, and had a wonderful eye for the

picturesque. Mr. O’Bleary was an Irishman, recently imported; he was in

a perfectly wild state; and had come over to England to be an

apothecary, a clerk in a government office, an actor, a reporter, or

anything else that turned up—he was not particular. He was on familiar

terms with two small Irish members, and got franks for everybody in the

house. He felt convinced that his intrinsic merits must procure him a

high destiny. He wore shepherd’s-plaid inexpressibles, and used to look

under all the ladies’ bonnets as he walked along the streets. His

manners and appearance reminded one of Orson.

‘Here comes Mr. Wisbottle,’ said Tibbs; and Mr. Wisbottle forthwith

appeared in blue slippers, and a shawl dressing-gown, whistling ‘_Di

piacer_.’

‘Good morning, sir,’ said Tibbs again. It was almost the only thing he

ever said to anybody.

‘How are you, Tibbs?’ condescendingly replied the amateur; and he

walked to the window, and whistled louder than ever.

‘Pretty air, that!’ said Evenson, with a snarl, and without taking his

eyes off the paper.

‘Glad you like it,’ replied Wisbottle, highly gratified.

‘Don’t you think it would sound better, if you whistled it a little

louder?’ inquired the mastiff.

‘No; I don’t think it would,’ rejoined the unconscious Wisbottle.

‘I’ll tell you what, Wisbottle,’ said Evenson, who had been bottling up

his anger for some hours—‘the next time you feel disposed to whistle

“The Light Guitar” at five o’clock in the morning, I’ll trouble you to

whistle it with your head out o’ window. If you don’t, I’ll learn the

triangle—I will, by—’

The entrance of Mrs. Tibbs (with the keys in a little basket)

interrupted the threat, and prevented its conclusion.

Mrs. Tibbs apologised for being down rather late; the bell was rung;

James brought up the urn, and received an unlimited order for dry toast

and bacon. Tibbs sat down at the bottom of the table, and began eating

water-cresses like a Nebuchadnezzar. Mr. O’Bleary appeared, and Mr.

Alfred Tomkins. The compliments of the morning were exchanged, and the

tea was made.

‘God bless me!’ exclaimed Tomkins, who had been looking out at the

window. ‘Here—Wisbottle—pray come here—make haste.’

Mr. Wisbottle started from the table, and every one looked up.

‘Do you see,’ said the connoisseur, placing Wisbottle in the right

position—‘a little more this way: there—do you see how splendidly the

light falls upon the left side of that broken chimney-pot at No. 48?’

‘Dear me! I see,’ replied Wisbottle, in a tone of admiration.

‘I never saw an object stand out so beautifully against the clear sky

in my life,’ ejaculated Alfred. Everybody (except John Evenson) echoed

the sentiment; for Mr. Tomkins had a great character for finding out

beauties which no one else could discover—he certainly deserved it.

‘I have frequently observed a chimney-pot in College-green, Dublin,

which has a much better effect,’ said the patriotic O’Bleary, who never

allowed Ireland to be outdone on any point.

The assertion was received with obvious incredulity, for Mr. Tomkins

declared that no other chimney-pot in the United Kingdom, broken or

unbroken, could be so beautiful as the one at No. 48.

The room-door was suddenly thrown open, and Agnes appeared, leading in

Mrs. Bloss, who was dressed in a geranium-coloured muslin gown, and

displayed a gold watch of huge dimensions; a chain to match; and a

splendid assortment of rings, with enormous stones. A general rush was

made for a chair, and a regular introduction took place. Mr. John

Evenson made a slight inclination of the head; Mr. Frederick O’Bleary,

Mr. Alfred Tomkins, and Mr. Wisbottle, bowed like the mandarins in a

grocer’s shop; Tibbs rubbed hands, and went round in circles. He was

observed to close one eye, and to assume a clock-work sort of

expression with the other; this has been considered as a wink, and it

has been reported that Agnes was its object. We repel the calumny, and

challenge contradiction.

Mrs. Tibbs inquired after Mrs. Bloss’s health in a low tone. Mrs.

Bloss, with a supreme contempt for the memory of Lindley Murray,

answered the various questions in a most satisfactory manner; and a

pause ensued, during which the eatables disappeared with awful

rapidity.

‘You must have been very much pleased with the appearance of the ladies

going to the Drawing-room the other day, Mr. O’Bleary?’ said Mrs.

Tibbs, hoping to start a topic.

‘Yes,’ replied Orson, with a mouthful of toast.

‘Never saw anything like it before, I suppose?’ suggested Wisbottle.

‘No—except the Lord Lieutenant’s levees,’ replied O’Bleary.

‘Are they at all equal to our drawing-rooms?’

‘Oh, infinitely superior!’

‘Gad! I don’t know,’ said the aristocratic Wisbottle, ‘the Dowager

Marchioness of Publiccash was most magnificently dressed, and so was

the Baron Slappenbachenhausen.’

‘What was he presented on?’ inquired Evenson.

‘On his arrival in England.’

‘I thought so,’ growled the radical; ‘you never hear of these fellows

being presented on their going away again. They know better than that.’

‘Unless somebody pervades them with an apintment,’ said Mrs. Bloss,

joining in the conversation in a faint voice.

‘Well,’ said Wisbottle, evading the point, ‘it’s a splendid sight.’

‘And did it never occur to you,’ inquired the radical, who never would

be quiet; ‘did it never occur to you, that you pay for these precious

ornaments of society?’

‘It certainly _has_ occurred to me,’ said Wisbottle, who thought this

answer was a poser; ‘it _has_ occurred to me, and I am willing to pay

for them.’

‘Well, and it has occurred to me too,’ replied John Evenson, ‘and I

ain’t willing to pay for ’em. Then why should I?—I say, why should I?’

continued the politician, laying down the paper, and knocking his

knuckles on the table. ‘There are two great principles—demand—’

‘A cup of tea if you please, dear,’ interrupted Tibbs.

‘And supply—’

‘May I trouble you to hand this tea to Mr. Tibbs?’ said Mrs. Tibbs,

interrupting the argument, and unconsciously illustrating it.

The thread of the orator’s discourse was broken. He drank his tea and

resumed the paper.

‘If it’s very fine,’ said Mr. Alfred Tomkins, addressing the company in

general, ‘I shall ride down to Richmond to-day, and come back by the

steamer. There are some splendid effects of light and shade on the

Thames; the contrast between the blueness of the sky and the yellow

water is frequently exceedingly beautiful.’ Mr. Wisbottle hummed, ‘Flow

on, thou shining river.’

‘We have some splendid steam-vessels in Ireland,’ said O’Bleary.

‘Certainly,’ said Mrs. Bloss, delighted to find a subject broached in

which she could take part.

‘The accommodations are extraordinary,’ said O’Bleary.

‘Extraordinary indeed,’ returned Mrs. Bloss. ‘When Mr. Bloss was alive,

he was promiscuously obligated to go to Ireland on business. I went

with him, and raly the manner in which the ladies and gentlemen were

accommodated with berths, is not creditable.’

Tibbs, who had been listening to the dialogue, looked aghast, and

evinced a strong inclination to ask a question, but was checked by a

look from his wife. Mr. Wisbottle laughed, and said Tomkins had made a

pun; and Tomkins laughed too, and said he had not.

The remainder of the meal passed off as breakfasts usually do.

Conversation flagged, and people played with their teaspoons. The

gentlemen looked out at the window; walked about the room; and, when

they got near the door, dropped off one by one. Tibbs retired to the

back parlour by his wife’s orders, to check the green-grocer’s weekly

account; and ultimately Mrs. Tibbs and Mrs. Bloss were left alone

together.

‘Oh dear!’ said the latter, ‘I feel alarmingly faint; it’s very

singular.’ (It certainly was, for she had eaten four pounds of solids

that morning.) ‘By-the-bye,’ said Mrs. Bloss, ‘I have not seen Mr.

What’s-his-name yet.’

‘Mr. Gobler?’ suggested Mrs. Tibbs.

‘Yes.’

‘Oh!’ said Mrs. Tibbs, ‘he is a most mysterious person. He has his

meals regularly sent up-stairs, and sometimes don’t leave his room for

weeks together.’

‘I haven’t seen or heard nothing of him,’ repeated Mrs. Bloss.

‘I dare say you’ll hear him to-night,’ replied Mrs. Tibbs; ‘he

generally groans a good deal on Sunday evenings.’

‘I never felt such an interest in any one in my life,’ ejaculated Mrs.

Bloss. A little double-knock interrupted the conversation; Dr. Wosky

was announced, and duly shown in. He was a little man with a red

face—dressed of course in black, with a stiff white neckerchief. He had

a very good practice, and plenty of money, which he had amassed by

invariably humouring the worst fancies of all the females of all the

families he had ever been introduced into. Mrs. Tibbs offered to

retire, but was entreated to stay.

‘Well, my dear ma’am, and how are we?’ inquired Wosky, in a soothing

tone.

‘Very ill, doctor—very ill,’ said Mrs. Bloss, in a whisper

‘Ah! we must take care of ourselves;—we must, indeed,’ said the

obsequious Wosky, as he felt the pulse of his interesting patient.

‘How is our appetite?’

Mrs. Bloss shook her head.

‘Our friend requires great care,’ said Wosky, appealing to Mrs. Tibbs,

who of course assented. ‘I hope, however, with the blessing of

Providence, that we shall be enabled to make her quite stout again.’

Mrs. Tibbs wondered in her own mind what the patient would be when she

was made quite stout.

‘We must take stimulants,’ said the cunning Wosky—‘plenty of

nourishment, and, above all, we must keep our nerves quiet; we

positively must not give way to our sensibilities. We must take all we

can get,’ concluded the doctor, as he pocketed his fee, ‘and we must

keep quiet.’

‘Dear man!’ exclaimed Mrs. Bloss, as the doctor stepped into the

carriage.

‘Charming creature indeed—quite a lady’s man!’ said Mrs. Tibbs, and Dr.

Wosky rattled away to make fresh gulls of delicate females, and pocket

fresh fees.

As we had occasion, in a former paper, to describe a dinner at Mrs.

Tibbs’s; and as one meal went off very like another on all ordinary

occasions; we will not fatigue our readers by entering into any other

detailed account of the domestic economy of the establishment. We will

therefore proceed to events, merely premising that the mysterious

tenant of the back drawing-room was a lazy, selfish hypochondriac;

always complaining and never ill. As his character in many respects

closely assimilated to that of Mrs. Bloss, a very warm friendship soon

sprung up between them. He was tall, thin, and pale; he always fancied

he had a severe pain somewhere or other, and his face invariably wore a

pinched, screwed-up expression; he looked, indeed, like a man who had

got his feet in a tub of exceedingly hot water, against his will.

For two or three months after Mrs. Bloss’s first appearance in

Coram-street, John Evenson was observed to become, every day, more

sarcastic and more ill-natured; and there was a degree of additional

importance in his manner, which clearly showed that he fancied he had

discovered something, which he only wanted a proper opportunity of

divulging. He found it at last.

One evening, the different inmates of the house were assembled in the

drawing-room engaged in their ordinary occupations. Mr. Gobler and Mrs.

Bloss were sitting at a small card-table near the centre window,

playing cribbage; Mr. Wisbottle was describing semicircles on the

music-stool, turning over the leaves of a book on the piano, and

humming most melodiously; Alfred Tomkins was sitting at the round

table, with his elbows duly squared, making a pencil sketch of a head

considerably larger than his own; O’Bleary was reading Horace, and

trying to look as if he understood it; and John Evenson had drawn his

chair close to Mrs. Tibbs’s work-table, and was talking to her very

earnestly in a low tone.

‘I can assure you, Mrs. Tibbs,’ said the radical, laying his forefinger

on the muslin she was at work on; ‘I can assure you, Mrs. Tibbs, that

nothing but the interest I take in your welfare would induce me to make

this communication. I repeat, I fear Wisbottle is endeavouring to gain

the affections of that young woman, Agnes, and that he is in the habit

of meeting her in the store-room on the first floor, over the leads.

From my bedroom I distinctly heard voices there, last night. I opened

my door immediately, and crept very softly on to the landing; there I

saw Mr. Tibbs, who, it seems, had been disturbed also.—Bless me, Mrs.

Tibbs, you change colour!’

‘No, no—it’s nothing,’ returned Mrs. T. in a hurried manner; ‘it’s only

the heat of the room.’

‘A flush!’ ejaculated Mrs. Bloss from the card-table; ‘that’s good for

four.’

‘If I thought it was Mr. Wisbottle,’ said Mrs. Tibbs, after a pause,

‘he should leave this house instantly.’

‘Go!’ said Mrs. Bloss again.

‘And if I thought,’ continued the hostess with a most threatening air,

‘if I thought he was assisted by Mr. Tibbs—’

‘One for his nob!’ said Gobler.

‘Oh,’ said Evenson, in a most soothing tone—he liked to make

mischief—‘I should hope Mr. Tibbs was not in any way implicated. He

always appeared to me very harmless.’

‘I have generally found him so,’ sobbed poor little Mrs. Tibbs; crying

like a watering-pot.

‘Hush! hush! pray—Mrs. Tibbs—consider—we shall be observed—pray,

don’t!’ said John Evenson, fearing his whole plan would be interrupted.

‘We will set the matter at rest with the utmost care, and I shall be

most happy to assist you in doing so.’ Mrs. Tibbs murmured her thanks.

‘When you think every one has retired to rest to-night,’ said Evenson

very pompously, ‘if you’ll meet me without a light, just outside my

bedroom door, by the staircase window, I think we can ascertain who the

parties really are, and you will afterwards be enabled to proceed as

you think proper.’

Mrs. Tibbs was easily persuaded; her curiosity was excited, her

jealousy was roused, and the arrangement was forthwith made. She

resumed her work, and John Evenson walked up and down the room with his

hands in his pockets, looking as if nothing had happened. The game of

cribbage was over, and conversation began again.

‘Well, Mr. O’Bleary,’ said the humming-top, turning round on his pivot,

and facing the company, ‘what did you think of Vauxhall the other

night?’

‘Oh, it’s very fair,’ replied Orson, who had been enthusiastically

delighted with the whole exhibition.

‘Never saw anything like that Captain Ross’s set-out—eh?’

‘No,’ returned the patriot, with his usual reservation—‘except in

Dublin.’

‘I saw the Count de Canky and Captain Fitzthompson in the Gardens,’

said Wisbottle; ‘they appeared much delighted.’

‘Then it _must_ be beautiful,’ snarled Evenson.

‘I think the white bears is partickerlerly well done,’ suggested Mrs.

Bloss. ‘In their shaggy white coats, they look just like Polar

bears—don’t you think they do, Mr. Evenson?’

‘I think they look a great deal more like omnibus cads on all fours,’

replied the discontented one.

‘Upon the whole, I should have liked our evening very well,’ gasped

Gobler; ‘only I caught a desperate cold which increased my pain

dreadfully! I was obliged to have several shower-baths, before I could

leave my room.’

‘Capital things those shower-baths!’ ejaculated Wisbottle.

‘Excellent!’ said Tomkins.

‘Delightful!’ chimed in O’Bleary. (He had once seen one, outside a

tinman’s.)

‘Disgusting machines!’ rejoined Evenson, who extended his dislike to

almost every created object, masculine, feminine, or neuter.

‘Disgusting, Mr. Evenson!’ said Gobler, in a tone of strong

indignation.—‘Disgusting! Look at their utility—consider how many lives

they have saved by promoting perspiration.’

‘Promoting perspiration, indeed,’ growled John Evenson, stopping short

in his walk across the large squares in the pattern of the carpet—‘I

was ass enough to be persuaded some time ago to have one in my bedroom.

‘Gad, I was in it once, and it effectually cured _me_, for the mere

sight of it threw me into a profuse perspiration for six months

afterwards.’

A titter followed this announcement, and before it had subsided James

brought up ‘the tray,’ containing the remains of a leg of lamb which

had made its _début_ at dinner; bread; cheese; an atom of butter in a

forest of parsley; one pickled walnut and the third of another; and so

forth. The boy disappeared, and returned again with another tray,

containing glasses and jugs of hot and cold water. The gentlemen

brought in their spirit-bottles; the housemaid placed divers plated

bedroom candlesticks under the card-table; and the servants retired for

the night.

Chairs were drawn round the table, and the conversation proceeded in

the customary manner. John Evenson, who never ate supper, lolled on the

sofa, and amused himself by contradicting everybody. O’Bleary ate as

much as he could conveniently carry, and Mrs. Tibbs felt a due degree

of indignation thereat; Mr. Gobler and Mrs. Bloss conversed most

affectionately on the subject of pill-taking, and other innocent

amusements; and Tomkins and Wisbottle ‘got into an argument;’ that is

to say, they both talked very loudly and vehemently, each flattering

himself that he had got some advantage about something, and neither of

them having more than a very indistinct idea of what they were talking

about. An hour or two passed away; and the boarders and the plated

candlesticks retired in pairs to their respective bedrooms. John

Evenson pulled off his boots, locked his door, and determined to sit up

until Mr. Gobler had retired. He always sat in the drawing-room an hour

after everybody else had left it, taking medicine, and groaning.

Great Coram-street was hushed into a state of profound repose: it was

nearly two o’clock. A hackney-coach now and then rumbled slowly by; and

occasionally some stray lawyer’s clerk, on his way home to Somers-town,

struck his iron heel on the top of the coal-cellar with a noise

resembling the click of a smoke-Jack. A low, monotonous, gushing sound

was heard, which added considerably to the romantic dreariness of the

scene. It was the water ‘coming in’ at number eleven.

‘He must be asleep by this time,’ said John Evenson to himself, after

waiting with exemplary patience for nearly an hour after Mr. Gobler had

left the drawing-room. He listened for a few moments; the house was

perfectly quiet; he extinguished his rushlight, and opened his bedroom

door. The staircase was so dark that it was impossible to see anything.

‘S-s-s!’ whispered the mischief-maker, making a noise like the first

indication a catherine-wheel gives of the probability of its going off.

‘Hush!’ whispered somebody else.

‘Is that you, Mrs. Tibbs?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Where?’

‘Here;’ and the misty outline of Mrs. Tibbs appeared at the staircase

window, like the ghost of Queen Anne in the tent scene in Richard.

‘This way, Mrs. Tibbs,’ whispered the delighted busybody: ‘give me your

hand—there! Whoever these people are, they are in the store-room now,

for I have been looking down from my window, and I could see that they

accidentally upset their candlestick, and are now in darkness. You have

no shoes on, have you?’

‘No,’ said little Mrs. Tibbs, who could hardly speak for trembling.

‘Well; I have taken my boots off, so we can go down, close to the

store-room door, and listen over the banisters;’ and down-stairs they

both crept accordingly, every board creaking like a patent mangle on a

Saturday afternoon.

‘It’s Wisbottle and somebody, I’ll swear,’ exclaimed the radical in an

energetic whisper, when they had listened for a few moments.

‘Hush—pray let’s hear what they say!’ exclaimed Mrs. Tibbs, the

gratification of whose curiosity was now paramount to every other

consideration.

‘Ah! if I could but believe you,’ said a female voice coquettishly,

‘I’d be bound to settle my missis for life.’

‘What does she say?’ inquired Mr. Evenson, who was not quite so well

situated as his companion.

‘She says she’ll settle her missis’s life,’ replied Mrs. Tibbs. ‘The

wretch! they’re plotting murder.’

‘I know you want money,’ continued the voice, which belonged to Agnes;

‘and if you’d secure me the five hundred pound, I warrant she should

take fire soon enough.’

‘What’s that?’ inquired Evenson again. He could just hear enough to

want to hear more.

‘I think she says she’ll set the house on fire,’ replied the affrighted

Mrs. Tibbs. ‘But thank God I’m insured in the Phoenix!’

‘The moment I have secured your mistress, my dear,’ said a man’s voice

in a strong Irish brogue, ‘you may depend on having the money.’

‘Bless my soul, it’s Mr. O’Bleary!’ exclaimed Mrs. Tibbs, in a

parenthesis.

‘The villain!’ said the indignant Mr. Evenson.

‘The first thing to be done,’ continued the Hibernian, ‘is to poison

Mr. Gobler’s mind.’

‘Oh, certainly,’ returned Agnes.

‘What’s that?’ inquired Evenson again, in an agony of curiosity and a

whisper.

‘He says she’s to mind and poison Mr. Gobler,’ replied Mrs. Tibbs,

aghast at this sacrifice of human life.

‘And in regard of Mrs. Tibbs,’ continued O’Bleary.—Mrs. Tibbs

shuddered.

‘Hush!’ exclaimed Agnes, in a tone of the greatest alarm, just as Mrs.

Tibbs was on the extreme verge of a fainting fit. ‘Hush!’

‘Hush!’ exclaimed Evenson, at the same moment to Mrs. Tibbs.

‘There’s somebody coming _up_-stairs,’ said Agnes to O’Bleary.

‘There’s somebody coming _down_-stairs,’ whispered Evenson to Mrs.

Tibbs.

‘Go into the parlour, sir,’ said Agnes to her companion. ‘You will get

there, before whoever it is, gets to the top of the kitchen stairs.’

‘The drawing-room, Mrs. Tibbs!’ whispered the astonished Evenson to his

equally astonished companion; and for the drawing-room they both made,

plainly hearing the rustling of two persons, one coming down-stairs,

and one coming up.

‘What can it be?’ exclaimed Mrs. Tibbs. ‘It’s like a dream. I wouldn’t

be found in this situation for the world!’

‘Nor I,’ returned Evenson, who could never bear a joke at his own

expense. ‘Hush! here they are at the door.’

‘What fun!’ whispered one of the new-comers.—It was Wisbottle.