“As mad as its hares,” muttered Vance, wrenching his button from the Cobbler’s grasp, and impatiently striding off. But he did not effect his escape so easily, for, close at hand, just at the corner of the lane, a female group, headed by Merle’s gaunt housekeeper, had been silently collecting from the moment the two friends had paused at the Cobbler’s door. And this petticoated divan suddenly closing round the painter, one pulled him by the sleeve, another by the jacket, and a third, with a nose upon which somebody had sat in early infancy, whispered, “Please, sir, take my picter fust.”
Vance stared aghast,—“Your picture, you drab!” Here another model of rustic charms, who might have furnished an ideal for the fat scullion in “Tristram Shandy,” bobbing a courtesy put in her rival claim.
“Sir, if you don’t objex to coming into the kitching after the family has gone to bed, I don’t care if I lets you make a minnytur of me for two pounds.”
“Miniature of you, porpoise!”
“Polly, sir, not Porpus,—ax pardon. I shall clean myself, and I have a butyful new cap,—Honeytun, and—”
“Let the gentleman go, will you?” said a third; “I am surprised at ye, Polly. The kitching, unbeknown! Sir, I’m in the nussery; yes, sir; and Alissus says you may take me any time, purvided you’ll take the babby, in the back parlour; yes, sir, No. 5 in the High Street. Mrs. Spratt,—yes, sir. Babby has had the small-pox; in case you’re a married gentleman with a family; quite safe there; yes, sir.”
Vance could endure no more, and, forgetful of that gallantry which should never desert the male sex, burst through the phalanx with an anathema, blackening alike the beauty and the virtue of those on whom it fell, that would have justified a cry of shame from every manly bosom, and which at once changed into shrill wrath the supplicatory tones with which he had been hitherto addressed. Down the street he hurried and down the street followed the insulted fair. “Hiss—hiss—no gentleman, no gentleman! Aha-skulk off—do—low blaggurd!” shrieked Polly. From their counters shop-folks rushed to their doors. Stray dogs, excited by the clamour, ran wildly after the fugitive man, yelping “in madding bray”! Vance, fearing to be clawed by the females if he merely walked, sure to be bitten by the dogs if he ran, ambled on, strove to look composed, and carry his nose high in its native air, till, clearing the street, he saw a hedgerow to the right; leaped it with an agility which no stimulus less preternatural than that of self-preservation could have given to his limbs, and then shot off like an arrow, and did not stop, till, out of breath, he dropped upon the bench in the sheltering honeysuckle arbour. Here he was still fanning himself with his cap, and muttering unmentionable expletives, when he was joined by Lionel, who had tarried behind to talk more about Sophy to the Cobbler, and who, unconscious that the din which smote his ear was caused by his ill-starred friend, had been enticed to go upstairs and look after Sophy in the crystal,—vainly. When Vance had recited his misadventures, and Lionel had sufficiently condoled with him, it became time for the latter to pay his share of the bill, pack up his knapsack, and start for the train. Now, the station could only be reached by penetrating the heart of the village, and Vance swore that he had had enough of that. “Peste!” said he; “I should pass right before No. 5 in the High Street, and the nuss and the babby will be there on the threshold, like Virgil’s picture of the infernal regions,
“‘Infantumque anima; flentes in limine primo.’
We will take leave of each other here. I shall go by the boat to Chertsey whenever I shall have sufficiently recovered my shaken nerves. There are one or two picturesque spots to be seen in that neighbourhood. In a few days I shall be in town! write to me there, and tell me how you get on. Shake hands, and Heaven speed you. But, ah! now you have paid your moiety of the bill, have you enough left for the train?”
“Oh, yes, the fare is but a few shillings; but, to be sure, a fly to Fawley? I ought not to go on foot” (proudly); “and, too, supposing he affronts me, and I have to leave his house suddenly? May I borrow a sovereign? My mother will call and repay it.”