Although there was a regular cut between the next-door people and us, yet Tug and the Honorable Master MacTurk kept up their acquaintance over the back-garden wall, and in the stables, where they were fighting, making friends, and playing tricks from morning to night, during the holidays. Indeed, it was from young Mac that we first heard of Madame de Flicflac, of whom my Jemmy robbed Lady Kilblazes, as I before have related. When our friend the Baron first saw Madame, a very tender greeting passed between them; for they had, as it appeared, been old friends abroad. “Sapristie,” said the Baron, in his lingo, “que fais-tu ici, Amenaide?” “Et toi, mon pauvre Chicot,” says she, “est-ce qu'on t'a mis a la retraite? Il parait que tu n'es plus General chez Franco—” “CHUT!” says the Baron, putting his finger to his lips.
“What are they saying, my dear?” says my wife to Jemimarann, who had a pretty knowledge of the language by this time.
“I don't know what 'Sapristie' means, mamma; but the Baron asked Madame what she was doing here? and Madame said, 'And you, Chicot, you are no more a General at Franco.'—Have I not translated rightly, Madame?”
“Oui, mon chou, mon ange. Yase, my angel, my cabbage, quite right. Figure yourself, I have known my dear Chicot dis twenty years.”
“Chicot is my name of baptism,” says the Baron; “Baron Chicot de Punter is my name.”
“And being a General at Franco,” says Jemmy, “means, I suppose, being a French General?”
“Yes, I vas,” said he, “General Baron de Punter—n'est 'a pas, Amenaide?”
“Oh, yes!” said Madame Flicflac, and laughed; and I and Jemmy laughed out of politeness: and a pretty laughing matter it was, as you shall hear.
About this time my Jemmy became one of the Lady-Patronesses of that admirable institution, “The Washerwoman's-Orphans' Home;” Lady de Sudley was the great projector of it; and the manager and chaplain, the excellent and Reverend Sidney Slopper. His salary, as chaplain, and that of Doctor Leitch, the physician (both cousins of her ladyship's), drew away five hundred pounds from the six subscribed to the Charity: and Lady de Sudley thought a fete at Beulah Spa, with the aid of some of the foreign princes who were in town last year, might bring a little more money into its treasury. A tender appeal was accordingly drawn up, and published in all the papers:—
“APPEAL. “BRITISH WASHERWOMAN'S-ORPHANS' HOME.