While Mrs. Pilchers is thus engaged, we will avail ourselves of the uninteresting circumstance to return to “Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys, their son and daughter.”
The day appointed for the family’s visit to the Great Exhibition, under the escort of the gallant Major Oldschool, had at length arrived; and the old soldier and his friends having partaken of an early breakfast, the Sandboys retired to their rooms, to prepare once more for the eventful occasion, confident that at length their long-pent-up curiosity was about to be gratified.
Mrs. Sandboys had not only to arrange her own toilet, but to look after that of her boy Jobby, and his father Cursty as well. She had to tie the neckcloth and the waistcoat-strings of the elder Sandboys, and to sew fresh strap buttons on to the trousers of the younger male member of the family, as well as to take in a large sippet in the back of one of his father’s “white vests,” before that boy could be made to look, as his mother said, in any way decent; adding that, really he did grow so fast, that it was as much as she could do to keep his trousers strapped down below the top of his socks.
Elcy’s toilet, too, was not a matter of a moment to arrange. There was her front hair to take out of the “crackers,” which she had concealed during breakfast behind her bandeaus, and there was her “back hair” to plait, and this, even with a young lady from the mountains of Cumberland, was a good half-hour’s occupation.
During the unusually long toilet of the Sandboys family, Major Oldschool fidgeted about his room for a few minutes, and then it struck him that as he should have to “beau” the ladies about, he really ought to treat himself to a pair of new gloves for the occasion; for really, as he said, he had carried his black kid about with him screwed up in his hands so long during the hot weather, that they were as stiff and crinkly as French plums. Accordingly he put on his hat, and, lest he should detain the ladies, hurried as fast as his wooden leg would carry him into the Strand, there to purchase, for the “first time these thirty years,” a pair of “yellow kids.”
In the meantime, the jobbing carpenter had stepped round “first thing in the morning,” as he had been ordered, to cut down the arm-chair, and fix on the rockers which he had brought with him. Mrs. Quinine was no sooner informed of his arrival than she directed Mrs. Pilchers to take the chair to the man, and let him do it down stairs, for that to have him sawing in the next room to her would be more than her nerves could bear.
Accordingly, “Nurse” having called the carpenter to fetch the chair, followed him with it into the passage: there she happened to catch sight of the open door and unoccupied state of Major Oldschool’s apartments, and having heard on the previous evening in the kitchen that the “parlours” were going to spend the day at the Great Exhibition, she immediately concluded that the Major had left with his friends for the Crystal Palace: so Mrs. Pilchers, being a discreet woman, and averse to “noises” and “breeding words,” as she called it, in strange places, thought it would be better, since Mrs. Fokesell was a very odd person and had very odd ways with her, if the man just stepped into Major Oldschool’s room, while the old gentleman was out, and did what little he had to do to the chair in that place, without asking any favours of the landlady. Then having strictly enjoined the man to be careful and make no dirt, she told him he might go into the parlour, and there alter the chair.
The carpenter accordingly carried the arm-chair into the Major’s apartment, while Mrs. Pilchers returned to “her lady.” The workman, to obtain as much light as possible, proceeded with the chair to the window, and placed it down on its side, the better to shorten the legs. He was in the act of opening his basket of tools, when hearing Mrs. Fokesell’s voice calling him from above stairs, he hastened away to learn what she desired. On reaching the drawing-room, the landlady requested the carpenter to bring his tools with him, saying that she wanted him to look to the lock of the cheffonier in the first floor, for that Baron de Boltzoff, the foreign gentleman who had her drawing-rooms, and was as mean as a Scotch pawnbroker, complained that the thing wouldn’t fasten properly, and had even lowered hisself to that degree to accuse her and the poor girl of pilfering his trumpery tea and sugar, confessing that he actually counted the lumps, and marked where the gunpowder stood in the caddy in black-lead pencil. Mrs. Fokesell then told the man she should like him to cobble the lock up somehow, but not to put her to any expense about it, as it was only an old rickety affair that she had picked up in Brokers’-row cheap, and to make it lock at all fast it must have a new bolt put to it, she knew, but that was more than she could afford to have done to the thing. All she wanted was just to keep the gentleman quiet by letting him see she had had it attended to.
The carpenter having hastened down stairs again for his basket of tools, hurried off, as requested, to the drawing-rooms for a short while, leaving Mrs. Quinine’s arm-chair lying on its side in front of the parlour window, as he had placed it.
The man had scarcely quitted the parlour of Major Oldschool, when that gentleman returned, admiring the unusually delicate appearance of his hands, as he entered the room. The first thing that struck his attention, after having taken off his gloves, and placed them carefully on the brim of his hat, in readiness against the coming of the Sandboys family, was the “strange chair” lying on its side by the front window of his apartment.