HENRY TREFOIL, ESQ.
To CHALKER AND CHARGER COACHMAKERS, BY APPOINTMENT, TO THE EMPEROR OF CHINA, Emperor of Morocco, the King of Oude, the King of the Cannibal Islands, &c., &c., &c., &c.
Long Acre, London.
(Followed by all the crowns, arms, orders, flourish, and flannel, peculiar to aristocratic tradesmen.)
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Three hundred and ninety pounds! And to think that the whole should come to be sold for ten sovereigns. Oh, what a falling off was there, my coachmakers! Surely the King of the Cannibal Islands could never afford to pay such prices as those! Verily, Sir Robert Peel was right when he said that there was no class of tradespeople whose bills wanted reforming so much as coachmakers. What ridiculous price they make wood and iron assume, and what absurd offers they make when you go to them to sell!
CHAPTER XVI.
THE MAJOR’S MENAGE.
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AND first about the “haryers!”
“Five-and-thirty years master of haryers without a subscription!”
This, we think, is rather an exaggeration, both as regards time and money, unless the Major reckons an undivided moiety he had in an old lady-hound called “Lavender” along with the village blacksmith of Billinghurst when he was at school. If he so calculates, then he would be right as to time, but wrong as to money, for the blacksmith paid his share of the tax, and found the greater part of the food. For thirty years, we need hardly tell the reader of sporting literature, that the Major had been a master of harriers—for well has he blown the horn of their celebrity during the whole of that long period—never were such harriers for finding jack hares, and pushing them through parishes innumerable, making them take rivers, and run as straight as railways, putting the costly performances of the foxhounds altogether to the blush. Ten miles from point to point, and generally without a turn, is the usual style of thing, the last run with this distinguished pack being always unsurpassed by any previous performance. Season after season has the sporting world been startled with these surprising announcements, until red-coated men, tired of blanks and ringing foxes, have almost said, “Dash my buttons, if I won’t shut up shop here and go and hunt with these tremendous harriers,” while other currant-jelly gentlemen, whose hares dance the fandango before their plodding pack, have sighed for some of these wonderful “Jacks” that never make a curve, or some of the astonishing hounds that have such a knack at making them fly.
Well, but the reader will, perhaps, say it’s the blood that does it—the Major has an unrivalled, unequalled strain of harrier blood that nobody else can procure. Nothing of the sort! Nothing of the sort! The Major’s blood is just anything he can get. He never misses a chance of selling either a single hound or a pack, and has emptied his kennel over and over again. But then he always knows where to lay hands on more; and as soon as ever the new hounds cross his threshold they become the very “best in the world”—better than any he ever had before. They then figure upon paper, just as if it was a continuous pack; and the field being under pretty good command, and, moreover, implicated in the honour of their performances, the thing goes on smoothly and well, and few are any the wiser. There is nothing so popular as a little fuss and excitement, in which every man may take his share, and this it is that makes scratch packs so celebrated. Their followers see nothing but their perfections. They are
“To their faults a little blind,
And to their virtues ever kind.”
At the period of which we are writing, the Major’s pack was rather better than usual, being composed of the pick of three packs,—“cries of dogs” rather—viz., the Corkycove harriers, kept by the shoemakers of Waxley; the Bog-trotter harriers (four couple), kept by some moor-edge miners; the Dribbleford dogs, upon whom nobody would pay the tax; and of some two or three couple of incurables, that had been consigned from different kennels on condition of the Major returning the hampers in which they came.
The Major was open to general consignments in the canine line—Hounds, Pointers, Setters, Terriers, &c.—not being of George the Third’s way of thinking, who used to denounce all “presents that eat.” He would take anything; anything, at least, except a Greyhound, an animal that he held in mortal abhorrence. What he liked best was to get a Lurcher, for which he soon found a place under a pear-tree.
The Major’s huntsman, old Solomon, was coachman, shepherd, groom, and gamekeeper, as well as huntsman, and was the cockaded gentleman who drove the ark on the occasion of our introduction. In addition to all this, he waited at table on grand occasions, and did a little fishing, hay-making, and gardening in the summer. He was one of the old-fashioned breed of servants, now nearly extinct, who passed their lives in one family and turned their hands to whatever was wanted. The Major, whose maxim was not to keep any cats that didn’t catch mice, knowing full well that all gentlemen’s servants can do double the work of their places, provided they only get paid for it, resolved, that it was cheaper to pay one man the wages of one-and-a-half to do the work of two men, than to keep two men to do the same quantity; consequently, there was very little hissing at bits and curb-chains in the Major’s establishment, the hard work of other places being the light work, or no work at all, of his. Solomon was the beau idéal of a harrier huntsman, being, as the French say, d’un certain age, quiet, patient, and a pusillanimous rider.
Now about the subscription.
It is true that the Major did not take a subscription in the common acceptation of the term, but he took assistance in various ways, such as a few days ploughing from one man, a few “bowels” of seed-wheat from another, a few “bowels” of seed-oats from a third, a lamb from a fourth, a pig from a fifth, added to which, he had all the hounds walked during the summer, so that his actual expenses were very little more than the tax. This he jockeyed by only returning about two-thirds the number of hounds he kept; and as twelve couple were his hunting maximum, his taxing minimum would be about eight—eight couple—or sixteen hounds, at twelve shillings a-piece, is nine pound twelve, for which sum he made more noise in the papers than the Quorn, the Belvoir, and the Cottesmore all put together. Indeed the old adage of “great cry and little wool,” applies to packs as well as flocks, for we never see hounds making a great “to-do” in the papers without suspecting that they are either good for nothing, or that the fortunate owner wants to sell them.
With regard to horses, the Major, like many people, had but one sort—the best in England—though they were divided into two classes, viz., hunters and draught horses. Hacks or carriage horses he utterly eschewed. Horses must either hunt or plough with him; nor was he above putting his hunters into the harrows occasionally. Hence he always had a pair of efficient horses for his carriage when he wanted them, instead of animals that were fit to jump out of their skins at starting, and ready to slip through them on coming home.
Clothing he utterly repudiated for carriage horses, alleging, that people never get any work out of them after they are once clothed.
The hunters were mostly sedate, elderly animals, horses that had got through the “morning of life” with the foxhounds, and came to the harriers in preference to harness. The Major was always a buyer or an exchanger, or a mixer of both, and would generally “advance a little” on the neighbouring job-master’s prices. Then having got them, he recruited the veterans by care and crushed corn, which, with cutting their tails, so altered them, that sometimes their late groom scarcely knew them again.
Certainly, if the animals could have spoken, they would have expressed their surprise at the different language the Major held as a buyer and as a seller; as a buyer, when like Gil Blas’ mule, he made them out to be all faults, as a seller when they suddenly seemed to become paragons of perfection. He was always ready for a deal, and would accommodate matters to people’s convenience—take part cash, part corn, part hay, part anything, for he was a most miscellaneous barterer, and his stable loft was like a Marine Store-dealer’s shop. Though always boasting that his little white hands were not “soiled with trade,” he would traffic in anything (on the sly) by which he thought he could turn a penny. His last effort in the buying way had nearly got him into the County Court, as the following correspondence will show, as also how differently two people can view the same thing.
Being in town, with wheat at 80s. and barley and oats in proportion, and consequently more plethoric in the pocket than usual, he happened to stray into a certain great furniture mart where two chairs struck him as being cheap. They were standing together, and one of them was thus ticketed:
No. 8205.
2 Elizabethan chairs.
India Japanned.
43 s.
The Major took a good stare at them, never having seen any before. Well, he thought they could not be dear at that; little more than a guinea each. Get them home for fifty shillings, say. There was a deal of gold, and lacker, and varnish about them. Coloured bunches of flowers, inlaid with mother of pearl, Chinese temples, with “insolent pig-tailed barbarians,” in pink silk jackets, with baggy blue trowsers, and gig whips in their hands, looking after the purple ducks on the pea-grcen lake—all very elegant.
He’d have them, dashed if he wouldn’t! Would try and swap them for Mrs. Rocket Larkspur’s Croydon basket-carriage that the girls wanted. Just the things to tickle her fancy. So he went into the office and gave his card most consequentially, with a reference to Pannell, the sadler in Spur Street, Leicestor-square, desiring that the chairs might be most carefully packed and forwarded to him by the goods train with an invoice by post.
When the invoice came, behold! the 43s. had changed into 86s.
“Hilloa!” exclaimed the astonished Major. This won’t do! 86s. is twice 43s.; and he wrote off to say they had made a mistake. This brought the secretary of the concern, Mr. Badbill, on to the scene. He replied beneath a copious shower of arms, orders, flourish, and flannel, that the mistake was the Major’s—that they, “never marked their goods in pairs,” to which the Major rejoined, that they had in this instance, as the ticket which he forwarded to Pannell for Badbill’s inspection showed, and that he must decline the chairs at double the price they were ticketed for.
Badbill, having duly inspected the ticket, retorted that he was surprised at the Major’s stupidity, that two meant one, in fact, all the world over.
The Major rejoined, that he didn’t know what the Reform Bill might have done, but that two didn’t mean one when he was at school; and added, that as he declined the chairs at 86s. they were at Badhill’s service for sending for.
Badbill wrote in reply—
“We really cannot understand how it is possible, for any one to make out that a ticket on an article includes the other that may stand next it. Certainly the ticket you allude to referred only to the chair on which it was placed.”
And in a subsequent letter he claimed to have the chairs repacked at the Major’s expense, as it was very unfair saddling them with the loss arising entirely from the Major’s mistake.
To which our gallant friend rejoined, “that as he would neither admit that the mistake was his, nor submit to the imputation of unfairness, he would stick to the chairs at the price they were ticketed at.”
Badbill then wrote that this declaration surprised them much—that they did not for a moment think he “intentionally misunderstood the ticket as referring to a pair of chairs, whereas it only gave the price of one chair,” and again begged to have them back; to which the Major inwardly responded, he “wished they might get them,” and sent them an order for the 43s.
This was returned with expressions of surprise, that after the explanation given, the Major should persevere in the same “course of error,” and hoped that he would, without further delay, favour the Co. with the right amount, for which Badbill said they “anxiously waited,” and for which the Major inwardly said, they “might wait.”
In due time came a lithographed circular, more imposingly flourished and flanneled than ever, stating the terms of the firm were “cash on delivery;” and that unless the Major remitted without further delay, he would be handed over to their solicitor, &c.; with an intimation at the bottom, that that was the “third application”—of which our gallant friend took no notice.
Next came a written,
“Sir,
“I am desired by this firm to inform you, that unless we hear from you by return of post respecting the payment of our account, we shall place the matter in the hands of our solicitors without further notice, and regret you should have occasioned us so much trouble through your own misunderstanding.”
Then came the climax. The Major’s solicitor went, ticket in hand, and tendered the 43s., when the late bullying Badbill was obliged to write as follows:—
“It appears you are quite correct rejecting the ticket, and we are in error. Our ticketing clerk had placed the figure in the wrong part of the card, the figure ‘two’ referring to the number of chairs in stock, and not as understood to signifying chairs for 43s.;” and Badbill humorously concluded by expressing a hope that the Major would return the chairs and continue his custom—two very unlikely events, as we dare say the reader will think, to happen.
Such, then, was the knowing gentleman who now sought the company of Fine Billy; and considering that he is to be besieged on both sides, we hope to be excused for having gone a little into his host and hostess’ pedigree and performances.
The Major wrote Billy a well-considered note, saying, that when he could spare a few days from his lordship and the foxhounds, it would afford Mrs. Yammerton and himself great pleasure if he would come and pay them a visit at Yammerton Grange, and the Major would be happy to mount him, and keep his best country for him, and show him all the sport in his power, adding, that they had been having some most marvellous runs lately—better than any he ever remembered.
Now, independently of our friend Billy having pondered a good deal on the beauty of the young lady’s eyes, he could well spare a few days from the foxhounds, for his lordship, being quite de Glancey-cured, and wishing to get rid of him, had had him out again, and put him on to a more fractious horse than before, who after giving him a most indefinite shaking, had finally shot him over his head.
The Earl was delighted, therefore, when he heard of the Major’s invitation, and after expressing great regret at the idea of losing our Billy, begged he would “come back whenever it suited him:” well knowing that if he once got him out of the house, he would be very sly if he got in again. And so Billy, who never answered Mamma’s repeated inquiries if there were any “Miss H’s” engaged himself to Yammerton Grange, whither the reader will now perhaps have the kindness to accompany him.
CHAPTER XVII.
ARRIVAL AT YAMMERTON GRANGE.—A FAMILY PARTY.
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AILWAYS have taken the starch out of country magnificence, as well as out of town.
Time was when a visitor could hardly drive up to a great man’s door in the country in a po’chav—now it would be considered very magnificent—a bliss, or a one-oss fly being more likely the conveyance. The Richest Commoner in England took his departure from Tantivy Castle in a one-horse fly, into which he was assisted by an immense retinue of servants. It was about time for him to be gone for Mons. Jean Rougier had been what he called “boxaing” with the Earl’s big watcher, Stephen Stout, to whom having given a most elaborate licking, the rest of the establishment were up in arms, and would most likely have found a match for Monsieur among them. Jack—that is to say, Mons. Jean—now kissed his hand, and grinned, and bowed, and bon-jour’d them from the box of the fly, with all the affability of a gentleman who has had the best of it.
Off then they ground at as good a trot as the shaky old quadruped could raise.
It is undoubtedly a good sound principle that Major and Mrs. Yammerton went upon, never to invite people direct from great houses to theirs; it dwarfs little ones so. A few days ventilation at a country inn with its stupid dirty waiters, copper-showing plate, and wretched cookery, would be a good preparation, only no one ever goes into an inn in England that can help it. Still, coming down from a first-class nobleman’s castle to a third-class gentleman’s house, was rather a trial upon the latter. Not that we mean to say anything disrespectful of Yammerton Grange, which, though built at different times, was good, roomy, and rough-cast, with a man-boy in brown and yellow livery, who called himself the “Butler,” but whom the women-servants called the “Bumbler.” The above outline will give the reader a general idea of the “style of thing,” as the insolvent dandy said, when he asked his creditors for a “wax candle and eau-de-Cologne” sort of allowance. Everything at the Grange of course was now put into holiday garb, both externally and internally—gravel raked, garden spruced, stables strawed, &c. All the Major’s old sheep-caps, old hare-snares, old hang-locks, old hedging-gloves, pruning-knives, and implements of husbandry were thrust into the back of the drawer of the passage table, while a mixed sporting and military trophy, composed of whips, swords and pistols, radiated round his Sunday hat against the wall above it.
The drawing-room, we need not say, underwent metamorphose, the chairs and sofas suddenly changing from rather dirty print to pea-green damask, the druggeted carpet bursting into cornucopias of fruit and gay bouquets, while a rich cover of many colours adorned the centre table, which, in turn, was covered with the proceeds of the young ladies’ industry. The room became a sort of exhibition of their united accomplishments. The silver inkstand surmounted a beautiful unblemished blotting-book, fresh pens and paper stood invitingly behind, while the little dictionary was consigned, with other “sundries,” to the well of the ottoman.
As the finishing preparations were progressing, the Major and Mrs. Yammerton carried on a broken discussion as to the programme of proceedings, and as, in the Major’s opinion,
“There’s nothing can compare,
To hunting of the hare,”
he wanted to lead off with a gallope, to which Mrs. Yammerton demurred. She thought it would be a much better plan to have a quiet day about the place—let the girls walk Mr. Pringle up to Prospect Hill to see the view from Eagleton Rocks, and call on Mrs. Wasperton, and show him to her ugly girls, in return for their visit with Mr. Giles Smith. The Major, on the contrary, thought if there was to be a quiet day about the place, he would like to employ it in showing Billy a horse he had to sell; but while they were in the midst of the argument the click of front gate sneck, followed by the vehement bow-wow-wow-wow-wow bark of the Skye terrier, Fury, announced an arrival, and from behind a ground-feathering spruce, emerged the shaky old horse, dragging at its tail the heavily laden cab. Then there was such a scattering of crinoline below, and such a gathering of cotton above, to see the gentleman alight, and such speculations as to his Christian name, and which of the young ladies he would do for.
“I say his name’s Harry!” whispered Sally Scuttle, the housemaid, into Benson’s—we beg pardon—Miss Benson’s, the ladies’-maid’s ear, who was standing before her, peeping past the faded curtains of the chintz-room.
“I say it’s John!” replied Miss Benson, now that Mr. Pringle’s head appeared at the window.
“I say it’s Joseph!” interposed Betty Bone, the cook, who stood behind Sally Scuttle, at which speculation they all laughed.
“Hoot, no! he’s not a bit like Joseph,” replied Sally, eyeing Billy as he now alighted.
“Lauk! he’s quite a young gent,” observed Bone.
“Young! to be sure!” replied Miss Henson; “you don’t s’pose we want any old’uns here.”
“He’ll do nicely for Miss;” observed Sally.
“And why not for Miss F.?” asked Henson, from whom she had just received an old gown.
“Well, either,” rejoined Sally; “only Miss had the last chance.”
“Oh, curates go for nothin’!” retorted Benson; “if it had been a captin it would have been something like.”
“Well, but there’s Miss Harriet; you never mention Miss Harriet, why shouldn’t Miss Harriet have a chance?” interposed the cook.
“Oh. Miss Harriet must wait her turn. Let her sisters be served first. They can’t all have him, you know, so it’s no use trying.”
Billy having entered the house, the ladies’ attention was now directed to Monsieur.
“What a thick, plummy man he is!” observed Benson, looking down on Rougier’s broad shoulders.
“He looks as if he got his vittles well,” rejoined Bone, wondering how he would like their lean beef and bacon fare.
“Where will he have to sleep?” asked Sally Scuttle.
“O, with the Bumbler to be sure,” replied Bone.
“Not he!” interposed Miss Benson, with disdain. “You don’t s’pose a reg’lar valley-de-chambre ‘ill condescend to sleep with a footman! You don’t know them—if you think that.”
“He’s got mouse catchers,” observed Sally Scuttle, who had been eyeing Monsieur intently.
“Ay, and a beard like a blacking brush,” whispered Bone.
“He’s surely a foreigner,” whispered Benson, as Monsieur’s, “I say! take vell care of her!—leeaft her down j-e-a-ntly” (alluding to his own carpet bag, in which he had a bottle of rum enveloped in swaddling clothes of dirty linen) to the cabman, sounded upstairs.
“So he is,” replied Benson, adding, after a pause, “Well, anybody may have him for me;”—saying which she tripped out of the room, quickly followed by the others.
Our Major having, on the first alarm, rushed off to his dirty Sanctum, and crowned himself with a drab felt wide-a-wake, next snatched a little knotty dog-whip out of the trophy as he passed, and was at the sash door of the front entrance welcoming our hero with the full spring tide of hospitality as he alighted from his fly.
The Major was overjoyed to see him. It was indeed kind of him, leaving the castle to “come and visit them in their ‘umble abode.” The Major, of course, now being on the humility tack.
“Let me take your cloak!” said he; “let me take your cap!” and, with the aid of the Bumbler, who came shuffling himself into his brown and yellow livery coat, Billy was eased of his wrapper, and stood before the now thrown-open drawing-room door, just as Mrs. Yammerton having swept the last brown holland cover off the reclining chair, had stuffed it under the sofa cushion. She, too, was delighted to see Billy, and thankful she had got the room ready, so as to be able presently to subside upon the sofa, “Morning Post” in hand, just as if she had been interrupted in her reading. The young ladies then dropped in one by one; Miss at the passage door, Miss Flora at the one connecting the drawing-room with the Sanctum, and Miss Harriet again at the passage door, all divested of their aprons, and fresh from their respective looking-glasses. The two former, of course, met Billy as an old acquaintance, and as they did not mean to allow Misa Harriet to participate in the prize, they just let her shuffle herself into an introduction as best she could. Billy wasn’t quite sure whether he had seen her before or he hadn’t. At first he thought he had; then he thought he hadn’t; but whether he had or he hadn’t, he knew there would be no harm in bowing, so he just promiscuated one to her, which she acknowledged with a best Featherey curtsey. A great cry of conversation, or rather of random observation, then ensued; in the midst of which the Major slipped out, and from his Sanctum he overheard Monsieur getting up much the same sort of entertainment in the kitchen. There was such laughing and giggling and “he-hawing” among the maids, that the Major feared the dinner would be neglected.
The Major’s dining-room, though small, would accommodate a dozen people, or incommode eighteen, which latter number is considered the most serviceable-sized party in the country where people feed off their acquaintance, more upon the debtor and creditor system, than with a view to making pleasant parties, or considering who would like to meet. Even when they are what they call “alone,” they can’t be “alone,” but must have in as many servants as they can raise, to show how far the assertion is from the truth.
Though the Yammertons sat down but six on the present occasion, and there were the two accustomed dumb-waiters in the room, three live ones were introduced, viz., Monsieur, the Bumbler, and Solomon, whose duty seemed to consist in cooling the victuals, by carrying them about, and in preventing people from helping themselves to what was before them, by taking the dishes off the steady table, and presenting them again on very unsteady hands.
No one is ever allowed to shoot a dish sitting if a servant can see it. How pleasant it would be if we were watched in all the affairs of life as we are in eating!
Monsieur, we may observe, had completely superseded the Bumbler, just as a colonel supersedes a captain on coming up.
“Oi am Colonel Crushington of the Royal Plungers,” proclaims the Colonel, stretching himself to his utmost altitude.
“And I am Captain Succumber, of the Sugar-Candy Hussars,” bows the Captain with the utmost humility; whereupon the Captain is snuffed out, and the Colonel reigns in his stead.
“I am Monsieur Jean Rougier, valet-de-chambre to me lor Pringle, and I sail take in de potage,—de soup,” observed Rougier, coming down stairs in his first-class clothes, and pushing the now yellow-legged Bumbler aside.
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And these hobble-de-hoys never being favourites with the fair, the maids saw him reduced without remorse.
So the dinner got set upon the table without a fight and though Monsieur allowed the Bumbler to announce it in the drawing-room, it was only that he might take a suck of the sherry while he was away. But he was standing as bolt upright as a serjeant-major on parade when “me lor” entered the dining-room with Mrs. Yammerton on his arm, followed by the Graces, the Major having stayed behind to blow out the composites.
They were soon settled in their places, grace said, and the assault commenced.
The Major was rather behind Imperial John in magnificence, for John had got his plate in his drawing-room, while the Major still adhered to the good old-fashioned blue and red, and gold and green crockery ware of his youth.
Not but that both Mamma and the young ladies had often represented to him the absolute necessity of having plate, but the Major could never fall in with it at his price—that of German silver, or Britannia metal perhaps.
We dare say Fine Billy would never have noticed the deficiency, if the Major had not drawn attention to it by apologising for its absence, and fearing he would not be able to eat his dinner without; though we dare say, if the truth were known our readers—our male readers at least—will agree with us, that a good, hot well-washed china dish is a great deal better than a dull, lukewarm, hand-rubbed silver one. It’s the “wittles” people look to, not the ware.
Then the Major was afraid his wine wouldn’t pass muster after the Earl’s, and certainly his champagne was nothing to boast of, being that ambiguous stuff that halts between the price of gooseberry and real; in addition to which, the Major had omitted to pay it the compliment of icing it, so that it stood forth in all its native imperfection. However, it hissed, and fizzed, and popped, and banged, which is always something exciting at all events; and as the Major sported needle-case-shaped glasses which he had got at a sale (very cheap we hope), there was no fear of people getting enough to do them any harm.
Giving champagne is one of those things that has passed into custom almost imperceptibly. Twenty, or five-and-twenty years ago, a mid-rank-of-life person giving champagne was talked of in a very shake-the-head, solemn, “I wish-it-may-last,” style; now everybody gives it of some sort or other. We read in the papers the other day of ninety dozen, for which the holder had paid £400, being sold for 13s. 6d. a doz.! What a chance that would have been for our Major. We wonder what that had been made of.
It was a happy discovery that giving champagne at dinner saved other wine after, for certainly nothing promotes the conviviality of a meeting so much as champagne, and there is nothing so melancholy and funereal as a dinner party without it. Indeed, giving champagne may be regarded as a downright promoter of temperance, for a person who drinks freely of champagne cannot drink freely of any other sort of wine after it: so that champagne may be said to have contributed to the abolition of the old port-wine toping wherewith our fathers were wont to beguile their long evenings. Indeed, light wines and London clubs have about banished inebriety from anything like good society. Enlarged newspapers, too, have contributed their quota, whereby a man can read what is passing in all parts of the world, instead of being told whose cat has kittened in his own immediate neighbourhood.—With which philosophical reflections, let us return to our party.
Although youth is undoubtedly the age of matured judgment and connoisseurship in everything, and Billy was quite as knowing as his neighbours, he accepted the Major’s encomiums on his wine with all the confidence of ignorance, and, what is more to the purpose, he drank it. Indeed, there was nothing faulty on the table that the Major didn’t praise, on the old horse-dealing principle of lauding the bad points, and leaving the good ones to speak for themselves. So the dinner progressed through a multiplicity of dishes; for, to do the ladies justice, they always give good fare:—it is the men who treat their friends to mutton-chops and rice puddings.
Betty Bone, too, was a noble-hearted woman, and would undertake to cook for a party of fifty,—roasts, boils, stews, soups, sweets, savouries, sauces, and all! And so what with a pretty girl along side of him, and two sitting opposite, Billy did uncommonly well, and felt far more at home than he did at Tantivy Castle with the Earl and Mrs. Moffatt, and the stiff dependents his lordship brought in to dine.
The Major stopped Billy from calling for Burgundy after his cheese by volunteering a glass of home-brewed ale, “bo-bo-bottled,” he said, “when he came of age,” though, in fact, it had only arrived from Aloes, the chemist’s, at Hinton, about an hour before dinner. This being only sipped, and smacked, and applauded, grace was said, the cloth removed, the Major was presently assuring Billy, in a bumper of moderate juvenile port, how delighted he was to see him, how flattered he felt by his condescension in coming to visit him at his ‘umble abode, and how he ‘oped to make the visit agreeable to him. This piece of flummery being delivered, the bottles and dessert circulated, and in due time the ladies retired, the Misses to the drawing-room, Madam to the pantry, to see that the Bumbler had not pocketed any of the cheese-cakes or tarts, for which, boy-like, he had a propensity.