Both were immensely interested to hear Jack's news, how in less than a week he would be off to Sandgate, there to be under the command of General Moore, and—as Jack hoped—to be called upon to bear the first brunt of Napoleon's expected invasion.
"Not you, my dear sir," objected the Admiral, with a beaming face. "Before ever Boney reaches British shores, depend on 't he'll have to render a good account of himself to our ships of war. I doubt me, Boney won't contrive to give our Navy the slip."
Jack had no wish to get into a discussion. "Well, sir, well, our Navy and our Army too will both of them do their best," he said. "But 'twould be a foolish fellow who should trust all his eggs in one basket, as the saying is. And should, by any chance, the slip be given, and Boney arrive on our shores, why then the Army will make him render his account fairly! Has anybody seen Mrs. Moore, ma'am?" And he turned to Mrs. Bryce.
Mrs. Bryce had not the least intention of parting hastily with her second cavalier. To walk about the Pump Room in view of all her Bath acquaintances, with a gentleman on either side, was highly desirable. So Polly and Molly were adroitly dropped behind, and she set off.
"If not Mrs. Moore, Jack, I have seen some one else of passable interest," she remarked. "Who think you that can be? Nay, I protest, you shall stay, and you shall guess. Who can it have been?" She flirted her fan at him.
Jack was quite unable to imagine. "Unless it might chance to be Miss Moore," he suggested as a happy thought.
"Miss Jane Moore—the General's sister? No, sir, no—no Moore at all. Yet a 'Jane' notwithstanding. Her name is Miss Jane Austen—a well-bred young woman, I do assure you, who lives with her parents and sister at 4 Sydney Place, in the Green Park Buildings. And only to think—the good lady has writ a book which may by chance one day be printed. Yes, indeed, and it is so, I do declare. To think of that, my dear Jack! A whole actual book, 'tis said, written and finished, and bought from Miss Jane Austen by one of our Bath booksellers, for the sum of ten pounds. I'm on no account to divulge the name of the bookseller; for now he's done his bargain, he's much in doubt if ever the tale will pay him for the expense of printing it. 'Tis a story of the name of some sort of Abbey. But if you come across the good lady, Miss Jane Austen herself, you may not tell her one word of what I have told to you, for 'tis a solemn secret from everybody. 'Twas told my husband in strictest confidence, and if I had not wormed it out of him—Ah! ha! Jack, wait till you get a wife, and then you'll not smile on that side of your mouth."
"I have found my bride, ma'am. 'Tis my Profession," declared Jack, in a manner which nowadays would be looked upon as grandiloquent, but which in those days was quite the right thing for an enthusiastic young man.
"Nay, nay, nothing of the sort, my dear sir! Wait a while, and you'll find your affections engaged in another fashion. Can you be so hard-hearted as to hold out even now, in the face of all this youth and elegance? See, there goes a bewitching young woman; though 'tis true she wears a shocking unbecoming gown. But she's a prodigious favourite, and she can dance as tolerable a minuet as any young female present. Then there's young Susie yonder—something of a hoyden, maybe, and calls herself 'a dasher,' but uncommonly pretty, and prodigiously good spirits. And if you'd sooner have a bluestocking, why, I've but to introduce you to Miss Jane Austen herself."
"And if I have no sort of wish for none of these good people, madam?" demanded Jack, dropping involuntarily into the fashionable jargon of the day, so much affected by Mrs. Bryce.