“Come, Master Curlylocks, you shall be my lady, and a very pretty girl you would make, too, if you were properly bemuslined”; adding, as we went downstairs together, “You and I shall be great friends, I'm sure; I like your face particularly. What a lot of stairs there are in this house! they'll tire me to death.”
When we returned to the pupils' room after dinner Lawless found, lying on the table, the note Dr. Mildman had written in such a mysterious manner before he left home in the morning, and proceeded to open it forthwith. Scarcely had he glanced his eye over it, when he was seized with so violent a fit of laughter, that I expected every moment to see him fall out of his chair. As soon as he had in some measure recovered the power of speaking he exclaimed:—
“Here, listen to this! and tell me if it is not the very best thing you ever heard in your lives “. He then read as follows:—
“'It is not without much pain that I bring myself to write this note; but I feel that I should not be doing my duty towards your excellent father, if I were to allow such extreme misconduct on the part of his son to pass unreproved. I know not towards what scene of vulgar dissipation you might be directing your steps, but the simple fact (to which I was myself witness) of your leaving my house in the low disguise of a carter's smock-frock, affords in itself sufficient proof that your associates must belong to a class of persons utterly unfitted for the companionship of a gentleman. Let me hope this hint may be enough, and that conduct so thoroughly disgraceful in one brought up as you have been may not occur again. I presume I need scarcely say that, in the event of your disregarding my wishes upon this point, the only course left open to me would be to expel you, a measure to which it would deeply grieve me to be obliged to resort.'”
His voice was here drowned by a chorus of laughter from all present who were aware of the true state of the case, which lasted without interruption for several minutes. At length Lawless observed:—
“I'll tell you what, it will be a death-blow to Smithson; a Macintosh made by him to be taken for a smock-frock! he'll never recover it.”
“Mildman might well look like a thunder-cloud,” said Coleman, “if that was the notion he had got in his head; what a jolly lark, to be sure!”
“How do you mean to undeceive him?” inquired Cumberland.
“Oh, trust me for finding a way to do that,” replied Lawless; “'the low disguise of a carter's smock-frock,' indeed! What fun it would be if he were to meet my governor in town to-day, and tell him of my evil courses! why, the old boy would go into fits! I wonder what he means by his 'scenes of vulgar dissipation'? I daresay he fancies me playing all-fours with a beery coalheaver, and kissing his sooty-faced wife; or drinking alternate goes of gin-and-water with a dustman for the purpose of insinuating myself into the affections of Miss Cinderella Smut, his interesting sister. By Jove! it's as good as a play!”
More laughter followed Lawless's illustration of Dr. Mildman's note. The subject was discussed for some time, and a plan arranged for enlightening the Doctor as to the true character of the mysterious garment.