CHAPTER III
HOW THE POSSESSOR OF THE DIAMOND IS WHISKED INTO A MAGNIFICENT CHARIOT, AND HAS YET FURTHER GOOD LUCK
I sat on the back seat of the carriage, near a very nice young lady, about my dear Mary’s age—that is to say, seventeen and three-quarters; and opposite us sat the old Countess and her other grand-daughter—handsome too, but ten years older. I recollect I had on that day my blue coat and brass buttons, nankeen trousers, a white sprig waist-coat, and one of Dando’s silk hats, that had just come in in the year ’22, and looked a great deal more glossy than the best beaver.
“And who was that hidjus manster”—that was the way her Ladyship pronounced,—“that ojous vulgar wretch, with the iron heels to his boots, and the big mouth, and the imitation goold neck-chain, who steered at us so as we got into the carriage?”
How she should have known that Gus’s chain was mosaic I can’t tell; but so it was, and we had bought it for five-and-twenty and sixpence only the week before at M’Phail’s, in St. Paul’s Churchyard. But I did not like to hear my friend abused, and so spoke out for him—
“Ma’am,” says I, “that young gentleman’s name is Augustus Hoskins. We live together; and a better or more kind-hearted fellow does not exist.”
“You are quite right to stand up for your friends, sir,” said the second lady; whose name, it appears, was Lady Jane, but whom the grandmamma called Lady Jene.
“Well, upon me conscience, so he is now, Lady Jene; and I like sper’t in a young man. So his name is Hoskins, is it? I know, my dears, all the Hoskinses in England. There are the Lincolnshire Hoskinses, the Shropshire Hoskinses: they say the Admiral’s daughter, Bell, was in love with a black footman, or boatswain, or some such thing; but the world’s so censorious. There’s old Doctor Hoskins of Bath, who attended poor dear Drum in the quinsy; and poor dear old Fred Hoskins, the gouty General: I remember him as thin as a lath in the year ’84, and as active as a harlequin, and in love with me—oh, how he was in love with me!”
“You seem to have had a host of admirers in those days, Grandmamma?” said Lady Jane.
“Hundreds, my dear,—hundreds of thousands. I was the toast of Bath, and a great beauty, too: would you ever have thought it now, upon your conscience and without flattery, Mr.-a-What-d’ye-call-’im?”