In the morning it was discovered that not only had Nettlebed removed the stains and the creases from the Duke’s coat, but he had also furbished up Tom’s apparel. Nettlebed by no means approved of Master Mamble, but if his master chose to take under his wing a youth of vulgar parentage there was nothing for it but to do what lay in his power to make him respectable. From having attended the Duke and his various cousins in their boyhood, he was perfectly well able to deal with even so recalcitrant a subject as Tom, even succeeding in sending him in to breakfast with his neck clean, and his hair brushed.
Tom, no sufferer from matutinal moroseness, enlivened the board with a ceaseless flow of conversation. As much of this took the form of pertinacious questions addressed to Captain Ware, his victim revised his overnight decision, and grimly informed the Duke that he would obey his behests with the utmost willingness. “And how you have borne it for close on a week, I know not, Adolphus!” he said.
The Duke laughed, but bade Tom postpone his questions. “For my cousin is always very cross at breakfast,” he explained, “and you will have, besides, plenty of opportunity to ask him what you like presently. I have been thinking that you might like to go out to Cheyney, and stay there for a day or two. Captain Ware will tell my head-keeper to look after you, and you may take a gun out, and very likely see Shillingford’s ferrets, and go ratting as well.”
The magnificence of his proposal served not only to render Tom speechless for quite ten minutes, but to make him assail his parent, upon his arrival at the Pelican, with such eager entreaties to him to permit him to accept the most splendid invitation of his life that Mr. Mamble was almost dazed by them. When he understood more clearly what the invitation was, he protested that he did not wish to be any longer separated from his heir. This made it easy for the Duke to extend the invitation to him, and so adroitly did he do it that Mr. Mamble had no suspicion that he was being got rid of, and Gideon had to hide an appreciative grin. Fortunately for the success of the Duke’s scheme, Mr. Mamble had fallen foul of the landlord, the boots, and one of the waiters at the White Horse, and had already declared his intention of shaking the dust of this hostelry from his feet. If he thought an invitation to stay at Cheyney while its owner remained in Bath irregular, this consideration was outweighed in his mind by the prospect of being able to floor his oldest crony and chief rival in Kettering with the careless announcement that he had been visiting the Duke of Sale at his house near Bath. He accepted with a low bow, and in a speech in which the words Condescension, Your Grace, Distinguishing Attention, and All Obligation occurred so frequently that the Duke could only be grateful to Tom, who interrupted it without ceremony, demanding to know when they might set forward on the journey.
“You may come with me there at once,” said Gideon. “We will go ahead of your father in my curricle, and see all in readiness.”
“Oh, sir! and may I drive it? May I? Do, pray, say I may!”
His parent bade him mind his manners, and recommended Captain Ware to give him a clout if he should be troublesome. Gideon, however, nodded, and bade him make haste and pack up his valise. Tom dashed off at once, and in a very short time the Duke was alone, and able to set forth on his quest of Mr. Mudgley.
He found it disagreeably reminiscent of his earlier quest for the Bird in Hand. None of the more obvious places of enquiry seemed ever to have heard of Mr. Mudgley, and visits to two gentlemen who bore names slightly resembling Mudgley proved abortive. The Duke drove back to the Pelican in the gig he had hired for these visits in a mood of considerable misgiving. He found that his cousin had returned from Cheyney, and that Nettlebed had had the forethought to bespeak suitable accommodation for them both at the Christopher. He nodded absently, and said: “Yes, very well, when my baggage has arrived. I must go round to Laura Place.”
“What’s amiss, Adolphus?” enquired his cousin.
“The devil’s in it that no one has heard of Mudgley. If I can’t discover him, I shall be in a worse scrape than any! That unfortunate child has nowhere to go, and no relatives who will own her, and what in thunder am I to do with her?”