“No, thank you, Tom,” added Thorsby and Dr. Leroy together. “And hark! what’s that? Why, the girls are singing! Singing, I declare,” said Thorsby, “in the very heart of Quakerdom.”
They hurried off in the direction of the sound, and came to where the large handsome summer-house stood overlooking the garden-wall. Around it was gathered the greater part of the company, and a chorus of voices swelled up from the summer-house, singing most deliciously, Moore’s “Harp of Tara.”
“Aha! how’s this?” said Thorsby to George Woodburn.
“Oh, it is a conspiracy of the girls. I believe that Yorkshire young lady put them up to it. She, my sisters, and Miss Heritage, have got possession of the summer-house and locked themselves in, and are enjoying the lark amazingly. And don’t they sing charmingly.”
“It’s grand fun,” said Thorsby; “look, even the old Friends, who say they don’t like music, how they are listening. Look even at that old Silenus, David Qualm, how he is drinking it in as he sits under the tree there. And Mrs. Heritage,—oh, she is smiling quite forgetfully at this carnal outburst.”
“Whist! whist!” said Mr. Heritage, equally forgetting his professed aversion to music.
Thorsby jogged Dr. Leroy’s arm, and whispered, “Hear that now!—is not that rich?”
The happy holders of the house sang on—a number of Moore’s Melodies and Burns’s Songs, even “Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled,” which was then very popular, and received loud encores and bravos from the company below, especially from the Claverings and the guests “not in the Society” from Castleborough. Thorsby and Dr. Leroy were as energetically applausive as the rest of them: and when Miss Drury put her handsome, laughing face out of one of the windows, and said, “May we capitulate honourably?—that is, to march out with all our arms”—here the other fair culprits showed a number of very persuasive arms through the other windows—“with all our arms,” continued Miss Drury, “and with colours flying?” the applause was uproarious; the merry girls descended in high glee from their orchestra, and were received with enthusiastic clappings of hands, and much congratulatory greeting from all assembled, which was every soul on the premises.
Scarcely had this lively clatter of tongues subsided, when another surprise seized on the guests. From out a walk issuing from amongst the trees, appeared Mr. Barthe, the eccentric dentist,—but oh, what a nose! The young ladies fairly shrieked with affright; the gentlemen stood for a moment dumbfounded; on came Mr. Barthe with a nose of huge size, and with a termination like a knob of oak. With a most grave and polite manner, the Friend bowed right and left with a grace befitting a courtier, and with hat in hand, and then passed round behind the trees. The next moment a loud and general laugh broke from the gentlemen, and was joined in by the ladies; but before it was well over, again Mr. Barthe appeared whence he had first issued, with another nose still more astounding. This time it was a huge very green frog; and with the same pantomime he passed along and away round the trees. The wonder and merriment were in full play, when a third time Mr. Barthe appeared, now with a yellow-red flaming beard and head of hair, and a nose—oh! Bardolph’s was nothing to it for fire and carbuncle. This time, the surprise having exhausted itself, the applause was loud and unrestrained, and the next moment the Quaker humourist again appearing in his proper aspect, and with the fiery beard and scalp and the three noses dangling by strings in his hand, was received with great gaiety by his wondering friends.
“My dear friends,” he said, “don’t imagine that these are disguises that I amuse myself with, or of my own invention. They were the odd fancy of an uncle of mine, a great woolstapler, well known to many here. As he rode far and wide through the country, buying up wool from the farmers in summer, he used to put on one of these noses, or this blazing beard and hair, as he approached some village; the wonder and even terror that he excited were very amusing to him. Boys ran crying—‘Oh, look at that man’s nose! What a nose!’ People looked in astonishment; but greater was their astonishment when on returning through the same village soon after, the boys, seeing him at a distance, would cry out—‘The man with the nose!’ and, behold, on his coming up his nose was just like any other person’s. I am afraid sometimes he must have occasioned some boys a beating, or at least a good snubbing, when they cried—‘Here comes the man with the nose!’ and the lookers out saw only a very shapely and befitting nose. Sometimes the women said—‘Poor gentleman, what a misfortune! Hush, children, you may be struck with such a nose if you mock!’ One woman greatly amused him: her little daughter was dancing in delight at the approach of the man with the nose, on the ash-heap by the door, but the poor woman seeing only a very respectable gentleman, with no nasal enormity whatever, gave the girl a slap, saying—‘Come in, little minx, I’ll teach thee to be making thy i—o—oms there on the ash-midden. I’ll give thee a lection!’”