"I beg your pardon, Mr Juggernaut," said I, giving him a slight shove, "I think you are standing——"
"Chundango, sir, if you please," said he, unconsciously making way for me, "Juggonath is the name which my poor benighted countrymen——"
"Juggernaut still speaking, as they say in the telegraphic reports from the House of Commons," I remarked to Lady Ursula, as I carried her off triumphantly; and the Indian's voice was lost in the hum of the general movement towards the dining-room.
I have promised not to shrink from alluding to those tender sensibilities which an ordinary mortal jealously preserves from the rough contact of his fellow-men; but I am not an ordinary mortal, and I have no hesitation in saying, that never in my life have I gone through such a distinct change of feeling in the same period as during the two hours we sat at that dinner. Deeply versed as I am in every variety of the sex, married or single, how was I to know that Lady Ursula was as little like the rest of the species as our Bombay friend was to wealthy Hindoos generally? What reason had I to suppose that Lady Broadhem's daughter could possibly be a new type?
Having been tolerably intimate at Broadhem House before she was out, I knew well the atmosphere which had surrounded her youth, and took it for granted that she had imbibed the family views.
"Interesting creature, John Chundango, Esq.," said I, for I thought she had looked grave at the flippancy of my last remark; "he has quite the appearance of a 'Brand.'"
"A what?" said Lady Ursula, as she looked up and caught him glaring fixedly at her with his great yellow eyeballs from the other side of the table.
"Of course I don't mean of the 'whipper-in' of the Liberal party, but of one rescued from fire. I understand that his great wealth, so far from having proved a snare to him, has enabled him to join in many companies for the improvement of Bombay, and that his theological views are quite unexceptionable."
"If his conversion leads him to avoid discussing either his neighbours or their theology, Lord Frank, I think he is a person whom we may all envy."
Is that a hit at her mother or at me? thought I. At Broadhem House, society and doctrine used to be the only topics of discussion. My fair friend here has probably had so much of it that she has gone off on another tack; perhaps she is a "still deep fast" one. As I thought thus, I ran over in my mind my young-lady categories, as follows:—