Then he retired, disconsolate, and, once out of sight, whipped into a gin-palace and swallowed a quartern of neat brandy, to take the taste out of his mouth. “Go it, Ned,” said he, to himself; “you can't afford to make enemies.”
The old lady went off bitter against the whole party except Mr. Severne; and he retired to his friends, disembarrassed of the one foe he had not turned into a downright friend, but only disarmed. Well does the great Voltaire recommend what he well calls “le grand art de plaire.”
Vizard sent Harris into Barfordshire, to prepare for the comfort of the party; and to light fires in all the bedrooms, though it was summer; and to see the beds, blankets and sheets aired at the very fires of the very rooms they were to be used in. This sacred office he never trusted to a housekeeper; he used even to declare, as the result of experience, that it was beyond the intellect of any woman really to air mattresses, blankets, and sheets—all three. He had also a printed list he used to show about, of five acquaintances, stout fellows all, whom “little bits of women” (such was his phraseology) had laid low with damp beds, having crippled two for life with rheumatism and lumbago, and sent three to their long home.
Meantime Severne took the ladies to every public attraction by day and night, and Vizard thanked him, before the fair, for his consideration in taking them off his hands; and Severne retorted by thanking him for leaving them on his.
It may seem, at first, a vile selection; but I am going to ask the ladies who honor me with their attention to follow, not that gay, amorous party of three, but this solitary cynic on his round.
Taking a turn round the garden in Leicester Square, which was new to him, Harrington Vizard's observant eye saw a young lady rise up from a seat to go, but turn pale directly, and sit down again upon the arm of the seat, as if for support.
“Halloo!” said Vizard, in his blunt way, “you are not well. What can I do for you?”
“I am all right,” said she. “Please go on;” the latter words in a tone that implied she was not a novice, and the attentions of gentlemen to strange ladies were suspected.
“I beg your pardon,” said Vizard, coolly. “You are not all right. You look as if you were going to faint.”
“What, are my lips blue?”