'You cannot take me,' she said with a tearful little laugh, 'but you shall take Harlequin, who made us acquainted. That way you will not be altogether alone.'
Harlequin wagged his tail, and sat up on his hind legs as though he thoroughly approved of the proposal, and Mr. Kelly, to whom the poodle could not but be an inconvenience, had not the heart to refuse the gift.
George had to give as well as to take, and felt even less blessed in giving than in receiving. For Miss Rose must have a souvenir of him, too, and what should it be but that inestimable testimony to her lover's loyalty and courage, the Portrait of the Queen! There was no way of escape, and thus, as a memorial of Mr. Kelly's singular attachment to the best of Causes and of Queens, Miss Townley was treasuring the likeness of the incomparable Smilinda. The ladies, in the nature of things, could never meet, George reckoned, for the daughter of the exiled country physician would not appear among the London fashionables.
In Paris, on his road to London, Mr. Kelly visited the Duke of Mar, who most unfortunately took notice of the dog, and asked him what he purposed to do with it.
'My Lord,' replied Kelly, 'when I am on my jaunts Harlequin will find a home with the Bishop of Rochester, whose wife has a great liking for dogs. The poor lady is ill, and, alas, near to her death; the Bishop is fretting under the gout, and his wife's sickness, and the jealousies among the King's friends. Moreover, he is much occupied with building his tomb in the Abbey, so that, altogether, their house is of the gloomiest, and Harlequin may do something to lighten it.'
For the poodle had more accomplishments than any dog that ever the Parson had met with, and this he demonstrated to the Duke of Mar by putting him through his tricks. The Duke laughed heartily, and commended the Parson's kindliness towards his patron. But in truth the Parson never did a worse day's work in the whole of his life.
CHAPTER XIV
[OF THE GREAT CONFUSION PRODUCED BY A BALLAD AND A DRUNKEN CROW]
From this time until Saturday, May 19, the world seemed to go very well for those concerned in the Bishop of Rochester's plot, which was a waiting plot; and in the other scheme, the scheme for an immediate rising, which was a hurrying scheme, and not at all known to the good Bishop. There was a comforting air of discontent abroad; the losses from the South Sea made minds heavy and purses light. Mr. Walpole had smoked nothing of what was forward, so far as a man could see; and within a month the country was to rise. Mr. Wogan from Paris travelled to Havre-de-Grace, whence James Roche, an Irishman, settled in that port, and a noted smuggler upon the English coast, set him across the Channel, and put him ashore at the Three Sheds and Torbay near Elephant Stairs in Rotherhithe. Mr. Wogan took his old name of Hilton, and went about his business, paying a visit now and again to the Cocoa Tree, where amongst other gossip he heard that Lady Oxford was still on the worst of friendly terms with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and the best of loving terms with Colonel Montague. There was more than one jest aimed at Mr. Kelly on this last account, since a man who has been fooled by a woman is ever a fair mark for ridicule; and when James Talbot began to talk of the Parson with a mock pity, Wogan could no longer endure it.
'Sure your compassion is all pure waste, Crow,' said he. 'I could tell you a very pretty tale about the Parson were I so minded.'