“Execution in it.—Sold up heverythin: ponies, and pianna, and brougham, and all. Mrs. Montague were hoff to Boulogne,—non est inwentus, Mr. Morgan. It’s my belief she put the execution in herself: and was tired of him.”
“Play much?” asked Morgan.
“Not since the smash. When your Governor, and the lawyers, and my lady and him had that tremendous scene: he went down on his knees, my lady told Mrs. Bonner, as told me,—and swear as he never more would touch a card or a dice, or put his name to a bit of paper; and my lady was a-goin’ to give him the notes down to pay his liabilities after the race: only your Governor said (which he wrote it on a piece of paper, and passed it across the table to the lawyer and my lady) that some one else had better book up for him, for he’d have kep’ some of the money. He’s a sly old cove, your Gov’nor.”
The expression of “old cove,” thus flippantly applied by the younger gentleman to himself and his master, displeased Mr. Morgan exceedingly. On the first occasion, when Mr. Lightfoot used the obnoxious expression, his comrade’s anger was only indicated by a silent frown; but on the second offence, Morgan, who was smoking his cigar elegantly, and holding it on the tip of his penknife, withdrew the cigar from his lips, and took his young friend to task.
“Don’t call Major Pendennis an old cove, if you’ll ’ave the goodness, Lightfoot, and don’t call me an old cove, nether. Such words ain’t used in society; and we have lived in the fust society, both at ’ome and foring. We’ve been intimate with the fust statesmen of Europe. When we go abroad we dine with Prince Metternitch and Louy Philup reg’lar. We go here to the best houses, the tip-tops, I tell you. We ride with Lord John and the noble Whycount at the edd of Foring Affairs. We dine with the Hearl of Burgrave, and are consulted by the Marquis of Steyne in everythink. We ought to know a thing or two, Mr. Lightfoot. You’re a young man, I’m an old cove, as you say. We’ve both seen the world, and we both know that it ain’t money, nor bein’ a Baronet, nor ’avin’ a town and country ’ouse, nor a paltry five or six thousand a year.”
“It’s ten, Mr. Morgan,” cried Mr. Lightfoot, with great animation.
“It may have been, sir,” Morgan said, with calm severity; “it may have been, Mr. Lightfoot, but it ain’t six now, nor five, sir. It’s been doosedly dipped and cut into, sir, by the confounded extravygance of your master, with his helbow shakin’, and his bill discountin’, and his cottage in the Regency Park, and his many wickednesses. He’s a bad un, Mr. Lightfoot,—a bad lot, sir, and that you know. And it ain’t money, sir—not such money as that, at any rate, come from a Calcuttar attorney, and I dussay wrung out of the pore starving blacks—that will give a pusson position in society, as you know very well. We’ve no money, but we go everywhere; there’s not a housekeeper’s room, sir, in this town of any consiquince, where James Morgan ain’t welcome. And it was me who got you into this Club, Lightfoot, as you very well know, though I am an old cove, and they would have blackballed you without me as sure as your name is Frederic.”
“I know they would, Mr. Morgan,” said the other, with much humility.
“Well, then, don’t call me an old cove, sir. It ain’t gentlemanlike, Frederic Lightfoot, which I knew you when you was a cab-boy, and when your father was in trouble, and got you the place you have now when the Frenchman went away. And if you think, sir, that because you’re making up to Mrs. Bonner, who may have saved her two thousand pound—and I dare say she has in five-and-twenty years as she have lived confidential maid to Lady Clavering—yet, sir, you must remember who put you into that service; and who knows what you were before, sir, and it don’t become you, Frederic Lightfoot, to call me an old cove.”
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Morgan—I can’t do more than make an apology—will you have a glass, sir, and let me drink your ’ealth?”