Only think! confined to his bed, and poor Laura unable to go to him to tend him, to comfort him, and smooth his pillow, at a time when he was in such a state of suffering, and all through me—all for my sake! I’m sure I was very much to be pitied, though no one seemed to care; while as for Clara, she grew unbearable, doing nothing but laugh.
Oh, yes, I knew well enough what was the matter, and so did two more; but, to make matters ten hundred times more aggravating, that lean Miss Furness must go about sighing, and saying that it was a bilious attack, and that England did not agree with Monsieur Achille like la belle France; and making believe that she was entirely in his confidence, when I don’t believe that he had done more than send word to Mrs Blunt herself. And then, as if out of sympathy, Miss Furness must needs make a fuss, and get permission to take the French class—she with her horrid, abominable accent, which was as much like pure French as a penny trumpet is like Sims Reeves’s G above the stave.
“Oh, yes,” she said, “she should be only too happy to take the class while poor Monsieur Achille was ill.”
And one way and another, the old fright made me so vexed that I should have liked to make her jealous by showing her one of Achille’s letters.
So, as I said before we had a dog in the place; and, oh, such a wretch! I’m sure that no one ever before saw such a beast, and there it was baying and howling the whole night through.
The very first day he came to inhabit the smart green kennel that Mrs Blunt had had bought, he worked his collar over his ears and got loose, driving the gardener nearly mad with the pranks he played amongst the flowers; when who should come but poor meek, quiet, innocent, tame Monsieur de Kittville. The wretch made at him, seizing him by the leg of his trousers; but how he ever did it without taking out a bit of his leg I can’t make out, for his things were always dreadfully tight; and there was the wretch of a dog hanging on and dragging back, snarling the while, and the poor little dancing master defending himself with his fiddle, and shrieking out—
“Brigand! Cochon! Diable de chien! Hola, ho! Au secours! I shall be déchiré! Call off te tog!”
And at every word he banged the great beast upon the head with the little fiddle, till it was broken all to bits; but still the dog held on, until the gardener and James ran to his assistance.
“He won’t hurt you, sir,” said the great, tall, stupid footman, grinning.