We all roared at this, and the doctor as loud as anyone; but he vowed that he had no hand in the pitch-plaster. It was a favourite family remedy of the late apothecary Sir George Catacomb, and had been put on by Mrs. Berry's own fair hands.
When Anatole came in with coffee, Berry was in such high courage, that he told him to go to the deuce with it; and we never caught sight of Lady Pash more, except when, muffled up to the nose, she passed through the salle-a-manger to go to her carriage, in which Dobus and the parson were likewise to be transported to Paris. “Be a man, Frank,” says she, “and hold your own”—for the good old lady had taken her nephew's part in the matrimonial business—“and you, Mr. Fitz-Boodle, come and see him often. You're a good fellow, take old one-eyed Callipash's word for it. Shall I take you to Paris?”
Dear kind Angelica, she had told her aunt all I said!
“Don't go, George,” says Berry, squeezing me by the hand. So I said I was going to sleep at Versailles that night; but if she would give a convoy to Jack Butts, it would be conferring a great obligation on him; with which favour the old lady accordingly complied, saying to him, with great coolness, “Get up and sit with John in the rumble, Mr. What-d'ye-call-'im.” The fact is, the good old soul despises an artist as much as she does a tailor.
Jack tripped to his place very meekly; and “Remember Saturday,” cried the Doctor; and “Don't forget Thursday!” exclaimed the divine,—“a bachelor's party, you know.” And so the cavalcade drove thundering down the gloomy old Avenue de Paris.
The Frenchman, I forgot to say, had gone away exceedingly ill long before; and the reminiscences of “Thursday” and “Saturday” evoked by Dobus and Whey, were, to tell the truth, parts of our conspiracy; for in the heat of Berry's courage, we had made him promise to dine with us all round en garcon; with all except Captain Goff, who “racklacted” that he was engaged every day for the next three weeks: as indeed he is, to a thirty-sous ordinary which the gallant officer frequents, when not invited elsewhere.
Cutler and I then were the last on the field; and though we were for moving away, Berry, whose vigour had, if possible, been excited by the bustle and colloquy in the night air, insisted upon dragging us back again, and actually proposed a grill for supper!
We found in the salle-a-manger a strong smell of an extinguished lamp, and Mrs. Berry was snuffing out the candles on the sideboard.
“Hullo, my dear!” shouts Berry: “easy, if you please; we've not done yet!”
“Not done yet, Mr. Berry!” groans the lady, in a hollow sepulchral tone.