“Yes, on the terms of Captain Pike's note,—ten pounds—, no wine nor tea-money, no passage-fare out, no livery, no—” I was afraid she was going to add, “No prog;” but she grew faint, and merely said, “Bring me a glass of water.”
“I'll put you in charge of the lamps and plate tomorrow,” said she, recovering.
“Very well, madam,” said I, aloud; while to myself I muttered, “They might easily be in better hands.”
“You'll wait at table to-day.”
“Yes, my lady—madam, I mean.”
“Soup always goes first to Mrs. Trussford,—black velvet, and very fat; then to the lady in blue spectacles; afterwards Miss Moriarty. Ah, I 'm too weak for giving directions; I 'm in what they call 'un état de fuillete;'” and with these words Mrs. Davis retired, leaving me to the contemplation of the battle-field and my own bruises.
My next care was to present myself below stairs; and although some may smile at the avowal, I had far more misgivings about how I should pass muster with the underlings than with the head of the department. Is the reader aware that it was a farrier of the Emperor Alexander's guard who first predicted the destruction of the “grand army” in Russia? A French horseshoe was shown to him, as a curiosity; and he immediately exclaimed, “What! not yet frost-roughed? These fellows don't know the climate; the snows begin to-morrow!” So is it: ignorance and pretension are infallibly discovered by “routine” people; they look to details, and they at once detect him who mistakes or overlooks them.
Resolving, at all events, to make my “Old World” habits stand my part in every difficulty, and to sneer down everything I did not understand, I put on a bold face, and descended to the lower regions.
Great people, “Ministers” and Secretaries for the “Home” and “Foreign,” little know how great their privilege is that in taking office they are spared all unpleasant meetings with their predecessors. At least, I conclude such to be the case, and that my Lord Palmerston, “stepping in,” does not come abruptly upon Lord Aberdeen “going out,” nor does an angry altercation arise between him who arrives to stay and he who is packing his portmanteau to be off. I say that I opine as much, and that both the entrance and the departure are conducted with due etiquette and propriety; in fact, that Lord A. has called his cab and slipped away before Lord P. has begun to “take up” the “spoons,”—not a bad metaphor, by the way, for an entrance into the Foreign Office.
No such decorous reserve presides over the change of a domestic ministry. The whole warfare of opposition is condensed into one angry moment, and the rival parties are brought face to face in the most ungracious fashion.