At this moment we heard a noise, as if some one had been scraping the mud off his shoes at the back part of the house, and giving various orders at the same time in a loud voice to the servants; then a heavy step through the lofty hall, and enter a tall, sallow, yellow-snake of a man, in wide white jane trowsers and waistcoat,—the perspiration streaming down his face, and dripping from the point of his sun-peeled nose, while the collar of his shirt and his neckcloth were also very sudorous. He wore a threadbare blue coat, the buttons all covered with verdigris, and a hat—which he kept on, by the way—worn white at the edges, with the pasteboard frame of it visible where the silk nap had been rubbed.
"Ah, Frenche," quoth mine host, for it was no other, "how are you, my dear fellow? Paul, call your missis—and, Mr Twig, I am so glad to see you. Boys, get second breakfast—we have kept it back on purpose."
"Twang," thought I.
"Frenche, my lad, introduce me—your nephew, I presume?"
I bowed, and was shaken furiously by the hand.
"I should have known him, I declare; so like you, my old cock."
"Gammon again," thought I.
"And, Twig, I say, you must introduce me to"—Here he indicated Don Felix, and prepared to "pull his foot," as the negroes say, in that direction also—in other words, to make his bow to Monsieur Flamingo, who was accordingly made known to him in due form, and had his fingers nearly wrung off, as mine had been. Don Felix, so soon as he was released, took an opportunity of catching my eye, shaking them aside, and blowing the tips as if they had been burned.
The ladies now appeared—our hostess, really a splendid woman, and her daughter, fresh off the irons from a fashionable English boarding-school, a very pretty girl, but suffering under prickly heat (a sort of a what-do-ye-call-um, a kind of Jamaica imitation, but deucedly like 'tother thing in Scotland notwithstanding); and the plague of freckles—ods bobs, how I do hate freckles!—where was I—oh—so our lunch, or second breakfast, was really a very pleasant one. From that time until dinner, we talked, and read, and played bagatelle, and amongst other means employed to kill time, Miss Cornstick was set to play on the piano. She was, I make no doubt, a first-rate performer, and spanged her fingers from the keys as if they had been red hot iron, and tossed her head about as she sung, and cast her eyes towards the roof as if she had seen something rather surprising there.
"That's what I call singing with animation, at all events; oh, how I wish the pedals were mine enemies," whispered Don Felix.