The visitor was the Rev. Mr. Emanuel Flummery.
“Ah! my dear madam,” said that pious man, stepping into the passage with all the unceremonious ease of a familiar friend, and not at the instant noticing the extraordinary height of the person whom he thus addressed; “I looked in just to ask you how you were—and—and,” he added, sinking his voice to a low whisper, “for the purpose of tasting in your arms a renewal of those favours which you yesterday——”
But to the ineffable wonderment of the reverend gentleman, the fictitious Mrs. Rudd dealt him such a sudden and violent blow with a heavy clenched fist, just between his two eyes, that he was floored on the spot; and the captain seizing the front-door key, darted out of the house.
Banging the door behind him, the gallant officer locked it, and marched away with a haste and a manliness of step which, had any one been passing at the time, would have betrayed his real sex in a moment.
Suddenly, however, it struck him that he was playing a female character; and, instantly relaxing his speed, he assumed a gait so mincing, affected, and fantastic, that his appearance was most comical and ludicrous.
He put up the parasol, and held it so as to screen his countenance, over which he likewise kept the blue gauze veil in many folds; and, in this manner, the gallant gentleman pursued his way half round the Square—not daring to take precipitately to his heels, yet fearful every instant of hearing a hue and cry raised behind him.
“Lauk-a-daisy me!” cried a female voice, suddenly breaking upon the captain’s ears, and speaking close by.
“Be Jasus! mim—and is it yourself?” ejaculated the gallant gentleman, stopping short: “because it’s me that’s afther being Misthress Rudd just at the prisint spaking!”
“You Mrs. Rudd!” exclaimed the infuriated landlady. “Here—murder—thieves——”
“Hould, mim!” said the captain, in a tone so ferocious that it silenced the woman in an instant: “if ye’re afther raising an alarm, mim, I’ll bethray ye to all the wor-r-ld for having bestowed your favours yesterday on that spalpeen of a methodist parson—that will I, Misthress Rudd, and bad luck to ye!”