“Whatever them there gentlemen will say when they see you looking like that, Miss Norah, I can’t think; and there is a few of ’em. There’s a bald-headed old party what give me a sovereign to show him in without announcing him.”
“A bald-headed old party?”
“‘Never mind my name,’ he says. ‘You show me straight in without announcing me, and here’s a sovereign for you.’ So I showed him in, because sovereigns aren’t lying about all over the place, not in this house they aren’t. Though I should like to know what he thinks he’s after, with no more hair on his head than a yellow Bramah egg.”
I felt that I also should like to know. Was it possible that that hoary reprobate had not yet repented of his last night’s misdoings. Jane went on to say something which nearly caused me to tumble down the remainder of the stairs.
“But the one that takes my fancy is him with the moustaches. Now, he is something like a man. If he’d been took clean out of a picture he couldn’t have been more what he ought to be.”
“With the moustaches?”
My thoughts recurred to the Duke of Chelmsford. Was he, in Jane’s estimation, something like a man? But it seemed that I was on the wrong scent.
“Him with the moustaches what turns up at the ends like as if they was ramrods. If he isn’t a soldier it ain’t for want of looking it. Splendid, I call him. Then look at the height of him—regular monument, as you might say. And that straight! Then them there eyes of his!—ain’t they eyes? I never! When they looked at me they made me go all over—really they did. And I’ve not got over the feeling now—that I haven’t. It’s my opinion, and always has been, that some of them foreign men is better grown than some of our English.”
“Foreign men?”
A premonitory something was beginning to chill me about the centre of the back.