In such a crisis, scarcely any one would regard such a trivial matter. And yet none of us ought to kick anybody, without knowing what it may lead to. Violence is to be deprecated: for it has to be paid for beyond its value, in twelve cases out of every dozen. And so it was now; for, if Coombe Lorraine had been before this, as Mrs. Pipkins declared (having learned French from her cookery-book), “the most Triestest place in the world,” it became even duller now that Bonny was induced, by personal considerations, to terminate rather abruptly his overtures to the kitchenmaid. For who brought the tidings of all great events and royal proceedings? Our Bonny. Who knew the young man of every housemaid in the vales of both Adur and Arun? Our Bonny. Who could be trusted to carry a scroll (or in purer truth perhaps, a scrawl) that should be treasured through the love-lorn hours of waiting—at table—in a zebra waistcoat? Solely and emphatically Bonny!
Therefore every tender domestic bosom rejoiced when the heartless Trotman was compelled to tread the track of his violence, lamely and painfully, twice every week, to fetch from Steyning his George and the Dragon, which used to be delivered by Bonny. Mr. Trotman, however, was a generous man, and always ready to share, as well as enjoy, the delights of literature. Nothing pleased him better than to sit on the end of a table among the household ladies and gentlemen, with Mrs. Pipkins in the chair of honour, and interpret from his beloved journal, the chronicles of the county, the country, and the Continent.
“Why, ho!” he shouted out one day, “what’s this? Can I believe my heyes? Our Halary going to the wars next week!”
“No, now!” “Never can be!” “Most shameful!” some of his audience exclaimed. But Mrs. Pipkins and the old butler shook their heads at one another, as much as to say, “I knowed it.”
“Mr. Trotman,” said the senior housemaid, who entertained connubial views; “you are sure to be right in all you reads. You are such a bootiful scholard! Will you obleege us by reading it out?”
“Hem! hem! Ladies all, it is yours to command, it is mine to obey. ‘The insatiable despot who sways the Continent seems resolved to sacrifice to his baleful lust of empire all the best and purest and noblest of the blood of Britain. It was only last week that we had to mourn the loss sustained by all Sussex in the most promising scion of a noble house. And now we have it on the best authority that Mr. H. L., the only son of the well-known and widely-respected baronet residing not fifty miles from Steyning, has received orders to join his regiment at the seat of war, under Lord Wellington. The gallant young gentleman sails next week from Portsmouth in the troopship Sandylegs’—or some such blessed Indian name!”
“The old scrimp!” exclaimed the cook, a warm ally to poor Hilary. “To send him out in a nasty sandy ship, when his birth were to go on horseback, the same as all the gentlefolks do to the wars!”
“But Mrs. Merryjack, you forget,” explained the accomplished Trotman, “that Great Britain is a hisland, ma’am. And no one can’t ride from a hisland on horseback; at least it was so when I was a boy.”
“Then it must be so now, John Trotman; for what but a boy are you now, I should like to know! And a bad-mannered boy, in my humble opinion, to want to teach his helders their duty. I know that I lives in a hisland, of course, the same as all the Scotchmen does, and goes round the sun like a joint on a spit: and so does nearly all of us. But perhaps John Trotman doesn’t.”
With this “withering sarcasm,” the ladycook turned away from poor Trotman, and then delivered these memorable words—