Then rising, and exclaiming: 'What savage heat! I wish the weather had a little feeling!' he broke up the party by ordering his curricle, and being the first to depart.
'That creature,' cried Mrs. Arlbery, 'if one had the least care for him, is exactly an animal to drive one mad! He labours harder to be affected than any ploughman does for his dinner. And, completely as his conceit obscures it, he has every endowment nature can bestow, except common sense!'
They now all descended to take leave, except the Ensign and Lionel, who went, arm in arm, prowling about, to view all the garrets, followed on tip-toe by Miss Dennel. Lavinia called vainly after her brother; but Camilla, hoping every instant she might clear her conduct to Edgar, was not sorry to be detained.
They had not, however, been five minutes in the parlour, before a violent and angry noise from above, induced them all to remount to the top of the house; and there, upon entering a garret whence it issued, they saw Miss Dennel, decorated with the Ensign's cocked hat and feather, yet looking pale with fright; Lionel accoutred in the maid's cloaths, and almost in a convulsion of laughter; and Macdersey, in a rage utterly incomprehensible, with the coachman's large bob-wig hanging loose upon his head.
It was sometime before it was possible to gather, that having all paraded into various garrets, in search of adventures, Lionel, after attiring himself in the maid's gown, cap, and apron, had suddenly deposited upon Miss Dennel's head the Ensign's cocked hat, replacing it with the coachman's best wig upon the toupee of Macdersey; whose resentment was so violent at this liberty, that it was still some minutes before he could give it articulation.
The effect of this full buckled bob-jerom which stuck hollow from the young face and powdered locks of the Ensign, was irresistibly ludicrous; yet he would have deemed it a greater indignity to take it quietly off, than to be viewed in it by thousands; though when he saw the disposition of the whole company to sympathise with Lionel, his wrath rose yet higher, and stamping with passion, he fiercely said to him—'Take it off, sir!—take it off my head!'
Lionel, holding this too imperious a command to be obeyed, only shouted louder. Macdersey then, incensed beyond endurance, lowered his voice with stifled choler, and putting his arms a-kimbo, said—'If you take me for a fool, sir, I shall demand satisfaction; for it's what I never put up with!'
Then, turning to the rest, he solemnly added—'I beg pardon of all the worthy company for speaking this little whisper, which certainly I should scorn to do before ladies, if it had not been a secret.'
Mrs. Arlbery, alarmed at the serious consequences now threatening this folly, said—'No, no; I allow of no secrets in my house, but what are entrusted to myself. I insist, therefore, upon being umpire in this cause.'
'Madam,' said Macdersey, 'I hope never to become such a debased brute of the creation, as to contradict the commands of a fair lady: except when it's upon a point of honour. But I can't consent to pass for a fool; and still more not for a poltroon—You'll excuse the little hint.'