"Thrue for ye, Bridget!—and who but yer oogly self put the worst o' thim things into me head, dinnin' at me o' nights when ye ought to been aslape?—answer me that, will ye? And now ye'r sthruttin' like a peacock wid dhe money I made to plase ye, and divil the bit can ye kape a civil tongue between yer lanthern jaws. Take that and be hanged" [or some other word] "to ye, Bridget Cunningham!"
"Pat Cunningham, ye'r a coarse, miserable brute—a low Irishman, and money can't make any thing else out of ye! Away from this we go to-morrow morning, mind that, before ye'r drunk again with yer low stage-drivers and thim fellers."
A snore was the only reply. Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame had secured the last word, according to her usual habit; but she had only done so at the expense of not having her rejoinder heard by the ears for which it was intended.
The lady kept her word, in the one important particular. Those who shared in the early breakfast of the next morning, before the starting of the stages, had the pleasure of seeing the whole family at table all bedizened for the road—Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame red-faced, stately and snappish; Miss Marianna subdued and unhappy, with red rings around her eyes, as if she had been crying all night; Mr. Brooks Cunninghame with his coarse face yet coarser than usual and his eyes suggestive of a late fuddle, piling away beef-steaks, eggs and biscuits into the human mill, as if he had some doubts of ever reaching another place where they could be procured to the same advantage; and Master Brooks Brooks, the freckles showing worse than ever on his pale and sickly-looking face, whining between every two mouthfuls, and vociferating: "Mommy, mommy, I've got a pain!" and, "Mommy, mommy, I tell you I want some more o' them are taters and gravy!"
They were pleasant company at the meal, very!—as they had been at all previous times when beaming on the horizon of other travellers, and as people out of place always prove to be to those who surround them! But the meal came to an end, the trunks that held the remaining finery of the two ladies were safely stowed, the stage-drivers bellowed: "All aboard!" and the three more precious members of the Brooks Cunninghame family were stowed within the coach without personally causing more than ten minutes of hindrance, while Mr. Brooks Cunninghame himself, with a bad cigar in mouth and a surreptitiously-obtained bottle of raw whiskey in the pocket of his duster, occupied a seat on the top and felt, for the time, almost as happy as he had once done when surmounting his loaded dirt-cart.
So Shoddy, or that particular manifestation of it, at least, rolled away from the Profile House. Whither, is no matter of consequence, for the incidental connection of the Brooks Cunninghames with this veracious history is concluded with the exit of that morning. But let no one suppose that the travelling world was thereafter rid of them, or of others to whom they only supply a type and index, during the remainder of the summer. For did not some of us meet them at Niagara later in the season, resident at the Clifton as the most aristocratic (because on monarchical ground) of all the houses, Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame a little more querulous and redder in the face than when at the Notch; Mr. Brooks Cunninghame a little trembly, as if whiskey and idleness were beginning to tell upon his system; Miss Marianna still un-cavaliered and hopelessly unexpectant in the wreck of her silks, laces, and jewelry; and Master Brooks Brooks pulling the curtains and drumming on the keys of the piano with his unwashed fingers, pending his greater opportunity to frighten a pair of horses into plunging over the bank, or to relieve the future of a dreary prospect by himself falling off Table Hock?
There was another departure from the Profile House the same morning. Whether the event of the night before had done anything to bring about that consummation, or whether previous arrangements and the pressure of time dictated such a movement—Halstead Rowan and the two friends in his company were among the passengers by one of the coaches that went through to the Crawford, bearing such as contemplated an immediate ascent of Mount Washington from that direction. It may be the pleasant duty of writer and reader to overtake them at the Crawford, at a very early period. Nothing more can now be said of the situation in which the Vanderlyn imbroglio and the Townsend friendship were left, than that the departing man saw nothing of the lawyer after they parted on the evening previous, and that his early stage rolled away long before the luxurious Vanderlyns were likely to have opened their eyes at the summons of the first gong rolling through the corridors to awaken them for the regular breakfast.