On the following morning Lady Cecilia repaired to the abode of Mr. Greenwood. When she arrived in Spring Gardens, she found the street completely blocked up with a train of charity children—boys and girls, marshalled by the parish beadle, and accompanied by the schoolmaster and schoolmistress. The girls were attired in their light blue dresses, plain straw bonnets, white collars, and pepper-and-salt coloured cloaks; and their arms, red with the cold, were only half covered with their coarse mittens. The boys wore their muffin caps, short coats, and knee-breeches; and each was embellished with a large tin plate, or species of medal, affixed like a badge of honour, to the breast. Their meagre countenances, their thin arms, and lanky legs, did not speak much in favour of the quantity of food which constituted their diurnal meals.
Lady Cecilia was conducted to the drawing-room by the Italian valet, who informed her that Mr. Greenwood would wait upon her the moment he had dismissed the charity children.
Lafleur, in the mean time threw open the door of the mansion, and admitted the procession into the spacious hall, after having kept the poor creatures shivering in the cold for nearly a quarter of an hour. The beadle took his station upon the steps, with awful dignity, and watched the boys and girls as they defiled past him in military order into the hall. It was very evident from the timid glances which the little scholars cast towards the countenance of this functionary, that they believed him to be one of the most important personages on the face of the earth; and perhaps they were even perplexed to decide, in their own minds, whether the parish beadle whom they saw before them, or Mr. Greenwood, M. P., whom they were about to see, was the greater man of the two.
At length the procession had entirely cleared the threshold of the mansion, and then only did the beadle enter. He doffed his enormous cocked hat out of respect to the owner of the dwelling in which he now found himself, and made his long staff ring upon the marble pavement of the hall with a din that electrified the children and called looks of solemn importance to the countenances of the schoolmaster and mistress.
In a few moments a side door opened, and Mr. Greenwood appeared.
The beadle struck his stick upon the hall floor once more; and the children, duly tutored to obey the signal, saluted the great man, the girls with low curtseys, and the boys by doffing their muffin caps, bobbing their heads forward, and kicking back their left legs.
"Well, Mr. Muffles," said the Member of Parliament to the beadle, with one of his usual affable smiles; "brought your little family—eh?"
"These children, sir," responded Muffles in a self-sufficient and important tone, glancing at the same time in a patronising manner upon the groups of juveniles around—"these children, sir, has come, as in dooty bounden, to hoffer up the hincense of their most gratefullest thanks to you, sir, as their kind paytron which supplied 'em with pea-soup, blankets, and religious tracts, to keep their bodies and souls both warm and comfortable, as one may say."
"I am delighted, Mr. Muffles," replied the Member of Parliament, in a most condescending manner, "to receive this little mark of gratitude on the part of those for whom I entertain a deep interest, and I am the more pleased because this visit on their part was quite spontaneous, and on mine totally unlooked for."
Mr. Greenwood did not think it necessary to state his knowledge that the whole affair had been got up by Lafleur, in obedience to his own commands.