After a deal of counseltation, my lord brought out a card, and there was simply written on it,
To-morrow, at the Ambassador's, at Twelve.
“Carry that back to your master, Chawls,” says he, “and bid him not to fail.”
You may be sure I stept back to him pretty quick, and gave him the card and the messinge. Master looked sattasfied with both; but suttnly not over happy; no man is the day before his marridge; much more his marridge with a hump-back, Harriss though she be.
Well, as he was a-going to depart this bachelor life, he did what every man in such suckmstances ought to do; he made his will,—that is, he made a dispasition of his property, and wrote letters to his creditors telling them of his lucky chance; and that after his marridge he would sutnly pay them every stiver. BEFORE, they must know his povvaty well enough to be sure that paymint was out of the question.
To do him justas, he seam'd to be inclined to do the thing that was right, now that it didn't put him to any inkinvenients to do so.
“Chawls,” says he, handing me over a tenpun-note, “here's your wagis, and thank you for getting me out of the scrape with the bailiffs: when you are married, you shall be my valet out of liv'ry, and I'll treble your salary.”
His vallit! praps his butler! Yes, thought I, here's a chance—a vallit to ten thousand a year. Nothing to do but to shave him, and read his notes, and let my whiskers grow; to dress in spick and span black, and a clean shut per day; muffings every night in the housekeeper's room; the pick of the gals in the servants' hall; a chap to clean my boots for me, and my master's opera bone reglar once a week. I knew what a vallit was as well as any genlmn in service; and this I can tell you, he's genrally a hapier, idler, handsomer, mor genlmnly man than his master. He has more money to spend, for genlmn WILL leave their silver in their waistcoat pockets; more suxess among the gals; as good dinners, and as good wine—that is, if he's friends with the butler: and friends in corse they will be if they know which way their interest lies.
But these are only cassels in the air, what the French call shutter d'Espang. It wasn't roat in the book of fate that I was to be Mr. Deuceace's vallit.
Days will pass at last—even days befor a wedding, (the longist and unpleasantist day in the whole of a man's life, I can tell you, excep, may be, the day before his hanging); and at length Aroarer dawned on the suspicious morning which was to unite in the bonds of Hyming the Honrable Algernon Percy Deuceace, Exquire, and Miss Matilda Griffin. My master's wardrobe wasn't so rich as it had been; for he'd left the whole of his nicknax and trumpry of dressing-cases and rob dy shams, his bewtifle museum of varnished boots, his curous colleckshn of Stulz and Staub coats, when he had been ableaged to quit so suddnly our pore dear lodginx at the Hotel Mirabew; and being incog at a friend's house, ad contentid himself with ordring a coople of shoots of cloves from a common tailor, with a suffishnt quantaty of linning.