“By Gad! sir!” he said, to Lieutenant Harrowby, who, having been a confidant of Captain Miles, was dreading in much fear and trembling that the onus of the whole affair would be laid upon his weak shoulders. “By Gad! sir, I have never been so scandalously treated in my life; not even by the Begum of Ferozesha!”
He said this in sufficiently angry tones, ere he left the room; but when he got into the hall, his wrath rose to thunder, and was terrific to behold.
The magnificent gold-mounted bamboo cane which he had left there, which had been presented to him by Rumagee Bumagee, the Rajah of Bugpoor, and which he valued at ever so many lakhs of rupees, was missing. The captain boiled over with indignation, called Laburnum Cottage a den of thieves, and heaped such reams of violent epithets on the heads of Lady Inskip, her daughter, and all her family, even unto the third and fourth generation, as made Miss Blandish’s scanty locks stand on end with fright, and even restored the campaigner to her senses.
Captain Curry Cucumber then went out of Laburnum Cottage, for good and all, and he vowed he would never set foot within another house in Bigton for social purposes or otherwise. For the remainder of his term of residence in the sea-side retreat, he shut himself up in the red brick corner house of the terrace he inhabited, where he spent his time, it is believed, from morning until night, swearing at his Kitmaghar, a lascar servant, and eating chutney and prawn curries. The poor unhappy half caste servant’s life must have been a sad burden to him, for the captain was continually calling him an “Ooloo ka bucka,” or son of an owl, and associating his name in Hindostanee with a big black monkey, who was being perpetually consigned to the lower regions.
Carry Inskip’s elopement was a “nine days’ wonder” in Bigton, and then was forgotten. It is supposed that the young lady made a better bargain of it than most runaway matches turn out, and she lives very happily on a somewhat limited income, with the gallant son of Mars, whom she espoused the day after their elopement, not at Gretna Green, but by licence at Chumpchopster, the adjacent cathedral town to Bigton.
The campaigner’s star was certainly under an eclipse. She had done well for her eldest, but Carry turned out “a bold, ungrateful hussie,” as she called her. Yet she quickly recovered from the blow. In bewitching Bigton she had been bewitched herself; but she was not one to be daunted, and now that her “darling Laura” was so comfortably established, the campaigner began to agitate a most notable scheme in her worldly-wise head.