“’Ave another cup o’ tea, man, and shut up,” cried Mrs Blathers, growing restive.
“Well, ladies and gen’lemen all,” resumed Trumps, with a benignant smile, “you know this lord that’s a-comin’. Some o’ you made ’im a present of a barrow an’ a hass once—”
“I know ’im! Bless ’is ’eart,” cried a coster-monger through a mouthful of cake.
At that moment the expected guests arrived.
But reader, we must not dwell upon what followed. There is no need. It is matter of history.
While the inhabitants of the slums were thus enjoying a social evening together, David Laidlaw was busy with one of his numerous epistles to that repository of all confidences—his mother.
“The deed is done, mither,” he wrote, “an’ the waux doll is mine, for better or waur, till death us do pairt. Of course I dinna mean that we’re mairried yet. Na, na! That event must be celebrated on the Braes o’ Yarrow, wi’ your help an’ blessin’. But we’re engaged, an’ that’s happiness enough the now. If I was to describe my state o’ mind in ae word, I wud say—thankfu’. But losh, woman, that gies ye but a faint notion o’ the whirligigs that hae been gaun on i’ my heed an’ hairt since I came to Bawbylon. Truly, it’s a wonderfu’ place—wi’ its palaces and dens; its rich an’ its puir; its miles upon miles o’ hooses an’ shops; its thoosands on thoosands o’ respectable folk, an’ its hundred o’ thoosands o’ thieves an’ pickpockets an’ burglars—to say naething o’ its prisons an’ lawyers an’ waux dolls!
“But I’m haverin’. Ye’ll be gled t’ hear that Colonel Brentwood—him that befreended me—is a’ richt. His lawyer turned oot to be a leear an’ a swindler. The will that was to turn the Colonel oot o’ a’ his possessions is a forgery. His bonny bairn Rosa, is, like mysel’, gaun’ to be mairried; an’ as the Colonel has nae mair bairns, he’s gaun’ to devote himsel’—so his wife says—to ‘considerin’ the poor.’ Frae my personal observation o’ Lunnon, he’ll hae mair than enough to consider, honest man!
“In my last letter I gied ye a full accoont o’ the fire, but I didna tell ’e that it was amang the chimley-pots and bleezes that I was moved to what they ca’ ‘pop the question’ to my Susy. It was a daft-like thing to do, I confess, especially for a sedate kin’ o’ man like me; but, woman, a man’s no jist himsel’ at sik a time! After a’, it was a graund climax to my somewhat queer sort o’ coortin’. The only thing I’m feart o’ in Bawbylon is that the wee crater Tammy Splint should come to ken aboot it, for I wad niver hear the end o’t if he did. Ye see, though he was there a’ the time, he didna ken what I was about. Speakin’ o’ that, the bairn has been made a flunkey by the Colonel—a teeger they ca’ him. What’s mair surprisin’ yet is, that he has ta’en the puir thief Trumps—alias Rodgers—into his hoosehold likewise, and made him a flunkey. Mrs Brentwood—Dory, as he ca’s her—didna quite like the notion at first; but the Colonel’s got a wonderfu’ wheedlin’ wey wi’ him, an’ whan he said, ‘If you an’ I have been redeemed an’ reinstated, why should not Rodgers?’ Dory, like a wise woman, gied in. The argement, ye ken, was unanswerable. Onywie, he’s in plush now, an white stockin’s.
“An’ that minds me that they’ve putt the wee laddie Splint into blue tights wi’ brass buttons. He just looks like an uncanny sort o’ speeder! It’s a daft-like dress for onything but a puggy, but the bairn’s as prood o’t as if it was quite reasonable. It maitters little what he putts on, hooiver, for he wad joke an’ cut capers, baith pheesical an’ intellectual, I verily believe, if he was gaun to be hanged!