A STREET COURTSHIP.
Baker. How them curl papers do become you, Miss Molly.
Miss Molly. Git ’long now, Baker, do.
THE BUNGALOW—CAPTAIN AND MRS. BRAGG.
Long, long ago, when Our Street was the country—a stagecoach between us and London passing four times a-day—I do not care to own that it was a sight of Flora Cammysole’s face, under the card of her mamma’s “Lodgings to Let,” which first caused me to become a tenant of Our Street. A fine good-humoured lass she was then; and I gave her lessons (part out of the rent) in French and flower-painting. She has made a fine rich marriage since, although her eyes have often seemed to me to say, “Ah, Mr. T., why didn’t you, when there was yet time, and we both of us were free, propose—you know what?” “Psha! Where was the money, my dear madam?”
Captain Bragg, then occupied in building Bungalow Lodge—Bragg, I say, living on the first floor, and entertaining sea-captains, merchants, and East Indian friends with his grand ship’s plate, being disappointed in a project of marrying a director’s daughter, who was also a second-cousin once removed of a peer, sent in a fury for Mrs. Cammysole, his landlady, and proposed to marry Flora off-hand, and settle four hundred a-year upon her. Flora was ordered from the back parlour (the Ground-floor occupies the Second-floor bed-room), and was on the spot made acquainted with the splendid offer which the First-floor had made her. She has been Mrs. Captain Bragg these twelve years.
You see her portrait, and that of the brute, her husband, on the opposite side of the page.
Bragg to this day wears anchor-buttons, and has a dress-coat with a gold strap for epaulets, in case he should have a fancy to sport them. His house is covered with portraits, busts, and miniatures of himself. His wife is made to wear one of the latter. On his sideboard are pieces of plate, presented by the passengers of the Ram Chunder to Captain Bragg. “The Ram Chunder East Indiaman, in a gale, off Table Bay;” “The Outward-bound Fleet, under convoy of Her Majesty’s frigate Loblollyboy, Captain Gutch, beating off the French squadron, under Commodore Leloup (the Ram Chunder, S.E. by E., is represented engaged with the Mirliton corvette);” “The Ram Chunder standing into the Hooghly, with Captain Bragg, his telescope, and speaking-trumpet, on the poop;” “Captain Bragg presenting the Officers of the Ram Chunder to General Bonaparte at St. Helena”—Titmarsh (this fine piece was painted by me when I was in favour with Bragg); in a word, Bragg and the Ram Chunder are all over the house.
