"A most appropriate simile," rejoined the doctor. "Well, Edward, see here; his conk is nothing to the one you shall wear:" and, so saying, he drew forth from a drawer a most horrible snout of wax, ingeniously fixed upon leather; and, applying it to the youth's face, he was actually struck with horror when he beheld himself in the glass. Emmelina shrieked, and her father roared out in raptures, "Admirable! the scalds on your face will add to the beauty of your countenance."
It was arranged that, on the following day Cleaver was to start by the stage for Southampton, where Lord Doodly and his son resided. He was there to sport his awful nose in churches, theatres, public walks, until the whole town should call him "the wretch with the horrible nose!" According to agreement, after a tender farewell scene with Emmelina, he proceeded on his journey; but as he was stepping into the coach at the Golden Cross, a lady with a child upon her lap shrieked out most vehemently, exclaiming, "Coach! guard! coach! let me out—let me out! I will not travel if that there gentleman comes in, with his nose."
"What! ma'am," replied the coachman: "would you have the gemman travel without his snorter to accommodate you?"
"Oh! I shall faint; I will faint! Oh! sir, take that nose away!"
Cleaver began to wink and blink most awfully.
"Let me out! let me out! Oh Lord! where could a man get such a nose!"
Cleaver pretended to suffer most cruelly, and clapped his handkerchief to his face in apparent agony.
"It's not a nose," exclaimed a gaunt East Indian in a corner, just awaking from a doze: "it's more like the proboscis of a rhinoceros: it is a disease which we call in Bengal an elephantiasis; and, egad! I'll get out of the coach also, for it's the most d—nable infectious disorder next to leprosy."
"Oh, Gracious!" shrieked the lady, rushing out; "my darling infant has caught it; my Tommy, my jewel, will have an elephant's nose!"
"It's a shame," exclaimed the nabob. "I'll complain to the proprietors. One might as well travel with the plague, and go to bed to the cholera morbus. Let me out, coachy! let me out this instant!"