The waiter having received his orders, (for the count saw that it was necessary to call for something,) hastened into the kitchen to communicate them to the cook.
"Upon my word, Betty," cried he, "you must do your best to-night; for
the chicken is for the finest-looking fellow you ever set eyes on. By
Jove, I believe him to be some Russian nobleman; perhaps the great
Suwarrow himself! and he speaks English as well as I do myself."
"A prince, you mean, Jenkins!" said a pretty girl who entered at that moment. "Since I was borne I never see'd any English lord walk up and down the room with such an air; he looks like a king. For my part, I should not wonder if he is one of them there emigrant kings, for they say there is a power of them now wandering about the world."
"You talk like a fool, Sally," cried the sapient waiter. "Don't you see that his dress is military? Look at his black cap, with its long bag and great feather, and the monstrous sword at his side; look at them, and then if you can, say I am mistaken in deciding that he is some great Russian commander,—most likely come over as ambassador!"
"But he came in a hackney-coach," cried a little dirty boy in the corner. "As I was running up stairs with Colonel Leson's shoes, I see'd the coachman bring in his portmanteau." "Well, Jack-a-napes, what of that?" cried Jenkins; "is a nobleman always to carry his equipage about him, like a snail with its shell on its back? To be sure, this foreign lord, or prince, is only come to stay here till his own house is fit for him. I will be civil to him."
"And so will I, Jenkins," rejoined Sally, smiling; "for I never see'd such handsome blue eyes in my born days; and they turned so sweet on me, and he spoke so kindly when he bade me stir the fire; and when he sat down by it, and throwed off his great fur cloak, I see'd a glittering star on his breast, and a figure so noble, that indeed, cook, I do verily believe he is, as Jenkins says, an enthroned king!"
"You and Jenkins be a pair of fools," cried the cook, who, without noticing their description, had been sulkily basting the fowl. "I will be sworn he's just such another king as that palavering rogue was a French duke who got my master's watch and pawned it! As for you, Sally, you had better beware of hunting after foreign men-folk: it's not seemly for a young woman, and you may chance to rue it."
The moralizing cook had now brought the whole kitchen on her shoulders. The men abused her for a surly old maid, and the women tittered, whilst they seconded her censure by cutting sly jokes on the blushing face of poor Sally, who stood almost crying by the side of her champion, Jenkins.
Whilst this hubbub was going forward below stairs, its unconscious subject was, as Sally had described, sitting in a chair close to the fire, with his feet on the fender, his arms folded, and his eyes bent on the flames. He mused; but his ideas followed each other in such quick confused succession, it hardly could be said he thought of anything.
The entrance of dinner roused him from his reverie. It was carried in by at least half a dozen waiters. The count had been so accustomed to a numerous suite of attendants, he did not observe the parcelling out of his temperate meal: one bringing in the fowl, another the bread, his neighbor the solitary plate, and the rest in like order, so solicitous were the male listeners in the kitchen to see this wonderful Russian.