whole of our silver plate, and left nothing but that bilious-looking “British” behind him.
Of course, Mr. Edward made out that it was all my fault, and would have it that if I’d had a grain of sense in my head, I might have seen that the character was false, and the bishop’s lady a common impostor—as, indeed, her reverend ladyship turned out. For when I went after her the next day, to give it her well, I learnt that she, too, had decamped from her lodgings the very same night as her inestimable treasure of a Thompson, without paying the week’s rent, and leaving nothing behind her but an empty rouge pot, and a hair trunk full of brickbats.
I needn’t tell the reader, I suppose, that I never heard the last of this; and positively, I was no sooner out of one scrape than, with so many bothering servants about one, I was into another.
You see everybody worth speaking of had left town for the season, and as I wouldn’t for the world have had it thought that I hadn’t gone for a trip on the Continent, I was forced, owing to Mr. Edward’s stinginess, and continual declarations that he was being ruined, to paper up the drawing-room blinds, and shut up all the shutters in front, to make believe that I was either at Paris, or Margate; while all the while I was living at the back of the house, very nearly in the dark, and like a vegetable had grown so white from mere want of light, that, positively, my face had no more colour in it than a potatoe-shoot in a coal-cellar. So, as my fine gentleman was taking his pleasure at the Warwick Assizes, and wouldn’t give me his consent to leave London, why I started off one fine morning without it, sending a letter for Mr. Edward, telling him that I had gone down to Gravesend, and leaving word with the servants, that I had gone up the Rhine. Then, packing up my carpet-bag and bonnet-box, and luckily catching the “Father of the Thames” at Hungerford-market, I jumped on it, and was soon at the end of my voyage. But Mr. Edward—just like his mean spite—wouldn’t send me the money I had written to him for; consequently, as lodgings were so high, and those filthy, gassy shrimps so dear, and the donkey-boys so extortionate, and I’d had enough of tea-parties at that stupid Windmill Hill, and was tired of those twopenny-halfpenny fêtes at Rosherville Gardens, and the housekeeping money I had brought with me was nearly all gone—why, in a fit of disgust, one evening, I packed up my carpet-bag and bonnet-box again, and putting myself on board the sixpenny opposition steamer, was soon landed at London Bridge—though I had expressly bargained with the cheats to take me on to Hungerford.
When I got home, I was astonished to see all the drawing-room shutters of the house open, and such a blaze of light in the room, that if I hadn’t known that Edward was still at the assizes, I should have declared some one had been lighting up my chandelier and candelabras in my absence. I went over to the other side of the way, and then, if I didn’t see such a number of shadows, moving to and fro, on the blinds, that I plainly perceived the room was full of company; and then I could tell by the motions of one of the black things handing some article or other to some one, who was drinking something, that a grand evening party was going on in my first floor, without my knowing a word about it. So I went to the door, and gave a gentle ring, so as not to alarm the company. Presently it was opened by that scullery-maid dressed out,—oh! you should have seen the thing—mercy! how she was dressed to be sure! Directly she saw me, she made a rush towards the stairs, but knowing by her dress and manner that something was wrong, I stopped her by catching hold of the skirt of her trumpery shilling-a-yard crimson, French poplin dress—with a broad satin stripe upon it, to make it look rich—and, pulling it all out of the gathers so nicely, dragged the tawdry, fal-lal minx into the back parlour, and turned the key upon her. Then I crept on tip-toe up stairs to the drawing-room door, where I stood listening to all that was going on within. “Will yer hallow me to hoffer yer some of this ere am, Miss,” said what I could have sworn was the young man at our grocer’s.—“You are very keyind, certingly, Mr. Roberts,” said that grand affected bit-of-goods of my upper housemaid. “Come, Miss Saunders,” said my footman, “you aint a doing nuffin; make yerself at home, I beg. Will yer allow Mrs. Fisher to send yer just a mouthful of her hexcellent kawphy.” “You’re very perlite, Mr. Heddard,” answered that under nurserymaid, drat her; “since yer so pressing, I’ll just try a wineglas of that there dog’s-nose, and then, if the kimpany his hagreeable I’ll take the libbity of propogin a toast.” And
“Oh! here’s Missus!”