Madame Finfillan was a California widow; petite, plump, and pretty—who bore her cruel bereavement with feminine philosophy, and slid round the world’s rough angles with a most eel-like dexterity. In short, she was a Renoux in petticoats. Madame welcomed the widow with great pleasure, because, as she said, she “wished to fill her house only with first-class boarders;” and the widow might be assured that she had the apartments fresh from the diplomatic hands of the Spanish Consul, who would on no account have given them up, had not his failing health demanded a trip to the Continent. Madame also assured the widow, that (although she said it herself) every part of her house would bear the closest inspection; that those vulgar horrors, cooking butter, and diluted tea, were never seen on her Epicurean table; that they breakfasted at ten, lunched at two, dined at six, and enjoyed themselves in the interim; that her daughter, Miss Clara, was perfectly well qualified to superintend, when business called her mother away. And that nobody knew (wringing her little white hands) how much business she had to do, what with trotting round to those odious markets, trading for wood and coal, and such like uninteresting things; or what would become of her, had she not some of the best friends in the world to look after her, in the absence of Mons. Finfillan.
Madame then caught up the widow’s little boy, and, half smothering him with kisses, declared that there was nothing on earth she loved so well as children; that there were half-a-dozen of them in the house who loved her better than their own fathers and mothers, and that their devotion to her was at times quite touching—(and here she drew out an embroidered pocket-handkerchief, and indulged in an interesting little sniffle behind its cambric folds). Recovering herself, she went on to say, that the manner in which some boarding-house keepers treated children was perfectly inhuman; that she had a second table for them, to be sure, but it was loaded with delicacies, and that she always put them up a little school lunch herself; on which occasion there was always an amiable little quarrel among them, as to which should receive from her the greatest number of kisses; also, that it was her frequent practice to get up little parties and tableaux for their amusement. “But here is my daughter, Miss Clara,” said she, introducing a fair-haired young damsel, buttoned up in a black velvet jacket, over a flounced skirt.
“Just sixteen yesterday,” said Madame; “naughty little blossom, budding out so fast, and pushing her poor mamma off the stage;” (and here Madame paused for a compliment, and looking in the opposite mirror, smoothed her jetty ringlets complacently). “Yes, every morning little blossom’s mamma looks in the glass, expecting to find a horror of a gray hair. But what makes my little pet so pensive to-day?—thinking of her little lover, hey? Has the naughty little thing a thought she does not share with mamma? But, dear me!”—and Madame drew out a little dwarf watch; “I had quite forgotten it is the hour Mons. Guigen gives me my guitar lesson. Adieu: dinner at six, remember—and Madame tripped, coquettishly, out of the room.
Yes; “dinner at six.” Gold salt-cellars, black waiters, and finger-bowls; satin chairs in the parlour, and pastilles burning on the side-table; but the sheets on the beds all torn to ribbons; the boarders allowed but one towel a week; every bell-rope divorced from its bell; the locks all out of order on the chamber doors; the “dear children’s” bill of fare at the “second table”—sour bread, watery soup, and cold buckwheat cakes—and “dinner at six,” only an invention of the enemy, to save the expense of one meal a day—the good, cozy, old-fashioned tea.
Well, the boarders were all “trusteed” by Madame’s butcher, baker, and milkman; Miss Clara eloped with the widow’s diamond ring and Mons. Peneke; and Madame, who had heard that Mons. Finfillan was “among the things that were,” was just about running off with Mons. Guigen, when her liege lord suddenly returned from California, with damaged constitution and morals, a dilapidated wardrobe and empty coffers.
Moral.—Beware of boarding-houses; in the words of Shakspere—
“Let those keep house who ne’er kept house before,
And those who have kept house, keep house the more.”