The next morning a cab was hired, to carry the Sandboys and their luggage to the Waterloo terminus.
The parting with Mrs. Fokesell was by no means of a pathetic character, though, when the time came for saying good bye, the landlady, who had been considerably mollified by the payment of her bill, hoped as how that bygones would be bygones, and acknowledged that she might have behaved a little “hindiscreet” on the late occasion, but her blood was up, she said, and then she wasn’t her own missus.
In a few hours afterwards, the family of the Sandboys were safely landed at “Parthenon House,” Wimbledon Common.
Here nothing occurred to ruffle the serenity of their retirement for some few days.
On the fifth day, however, from their entering the establishment, the French master, who was really a “Natif de Paris,” and had published a sheet wherein the whole of the French genders were ingeniously reduced to two, called to request that a friend of his might be accommodated with a temporary apartment under that roof. His friend had come to England to be present at the opening of the Great Exhibition, and wished for a large airy room. The mother of the head of the establishment was delighted to have the opportunity of disposing of her left wing—if the gentleman would not object to the beds remaining in the apartment, for she had no other place wherein to stow them. The French master observed, that he was sure his friend and compatriot would be too happy to oblige so young and beautiful a lady (the mother had long ago taken to false fronts), and with this enchanting tara-diddle, he withdrew from the premises, leaving the old lady to declare that there was a something—she didn’t know what—about French manners, that to her mind far surpassed the English.
The day after this, the French master accompanied his friend M. le Comte de Sanschemise, who came in a large cloak, an immense Spanish hat, and a small reticule-like carpet bag, to take possession of his apartment and its extensive range of beds.
Now it so happened that the day after M. le Comte had entered the ladies’ establishment, three thousand of the French Gardes Nationales, who had come over to be present at the opening of the Crystal Palace on the 1st of May, were deposited in the very heart of the metropolis by a monster train from Dover.
To locate so large a colony in the foreign districts of London was impossible. The Frenchmen were already ten in a room in all the purlieus of Golden-square. Leicester, on the other hand, what with the world in the centre, and the denizens of all nations swarming on every side of it, was as full as it could well hold. The Quadrant had become as Frenchified as the Palais Royal, and the boxes of the several cheap Restaurants round about the Haymarket were swarming with parties of poor Parisians, who invariably demanded portions for one and plates for six.
It was in this emergency that the French master of Parthenon House, who was known to some of the troop, bethought him of the many spare beds in the apartment of his friend, M. le Comte de Sanschemise, and immediately proposed that as many of them should retire to that establishment as the room could hold. For the sake of appearances, however, it was arranged that they should proceed to the house in not more than two at one time, and accordingly every conveyance that left London deposited its couple of “citoyens” at the door of the Wimbledon Establishment for Young Ladies.