"A baronet!" cried Miss Audley; "I wish I had known that before, I should certainly have made a dead set at him. A baronet would have been far better worth the trouble of a flirtation, than you, Mr. Williams, or you, Mr. Sutton, or you, Mr. Belfield, or any of the other gentlemen that I have been amusing myself with during the voyage."
"A baronet!" exclaimed Mrs. Cummings; "well, really—and have I been four weeks in the same ship with a baronet—and sitting at the same table with him,—and often talking to him face to face?—I wonder what Mrs. Thimbleby of Threadneedle street would say if she knew that I am now acquainted with a baronet!"
"But what is his name, captain?" said Mr. Fenton; "still you do not tell us."
"His name," answered the captain, "is Sir St. John St. Leger."
"Sir St. John St. Leger!" was repeated by each of the company.
"Yes," resumed Captain Santlow—"and you see how difficult it is to say it smoothly. There is more sibilation in it than in any name I know.—Was I not right in keeping it from you till the voyage was over, and thus sparing you the trouble of articulating it, and myself the annoyance of hearing it? See, here it is in writing."
The captain took his manifest out of his pocket-book, and showed us the words, "Sir St. John St. Leger, of Sevenoaks, Kent."
"Pho!" said Mrs. Cummings. "Where's the trouble in speaking that name, if you only knew the right way—I have heard it a hundred times—and even seen it in the newspapers. This must be the very gentleman that my cousin George's wife is always talking about. She has a brother that lives near his estate, a topping apothecary. Why, 'tis easy enough to say his name, if you say it as we do in England."
"And how is that?" asked the captain; "what can you make of Sir St. John St. Leger?"
"Why, Sir Singeon Sillinger, to be sure," replied Mrs. Cummings; "I am confident he would have answered to that name. Sir Singeon Sillinger of Sunnock—cousin George's wife's brother lives close by Sunnock in a yellow house with a red door."