“This little Rosey, sir, has promised to take care of me on this side of Styx,” continued Uncle James; “and if she could but be left alone and to do it without mamma—there, I won’t say a word more against her—we should get on none the worse.”
“Uncle James, I must make a picture of you, for Rosey,” said Clive, good-humouredly. And Rosey said, “Oh, thank you, Clive,” and held out that pretty little hand, and looked so sweet and kind and happy, that Clive could not but be charmed at the sight of so much innocence and candour.
“Quasty peecoly Rosiny,” says James, in a fine Scotch Italian, “e la piu bella, la piu cara, ragazza ma la mawdry e il diav——”
“Don’t, uncle!” cried Rosey, again; and Clive laughed at Uncle James’s wonderful outbreak in a foreign tongue.
“Eh! I thought ye didn’t know a word of the sweet language, Rosey! It’s just the Lenguy Toscawny in Bocky Romawny that I thought to try in compliment to this young monkey who has seen the world.” And by this time Saint John’s Wood was reached, and Mr. Sherrick’s handsome villa, at the door of which the three beheld the Rev. Charles Honeyman stepping out of a neat brougham.
The drawing-room contained several pictures of Mrs. Sherrick when she was in the theatrical line; Smee’s portrait of her, which was never half handsome enough—for my Betsy, Sherrick said indignantly; the print of her in Artaxerxes, with her signature as Elizabeth Folthorpe (not in truth a fine specimen of calligraphy) the testimonial presented to her on the conclusion of the triumphal season of 18—, at Drury Lane, by her ever grateful friend Adolphus Smacker, Lessee, who, of course, went to law with her next year; and other Thespian emblems. But Clive remarked, with not a little amusement, that the drawing-room tables were now covered with a number of those books which he had seen at Madame de Moncontour’s, and many French and German ecclesiastical gimcracks, such as are familiar to numberless readers of mine. These were the Lives of St. Botibol of Islington and St. Willibald of Bareacres, with pictures of those confessors. Then there was the Legend of Margery Dawe, Virgin and Martyr, with a sweet double frontispiece, representing (1) the sainted woman selling her feather-bed for the benefit of the poor; and (2) reclining upon straw, the leanest of invalids. There was Old Daddy Longlegs, and how he was brought to say his Prayers; a Tale for Children, by a Lady, with a preface dated St. Chad’s Eve, and signed “C. H.” The Rev. Charles Honeyman’s Sermons, delivered at Lady Whittlesea’s Chapel. Poems of Early Days, by Charles Honeyman, A.M. The Life of good Dame Whittlesea, by do, do. Yes, Charles had come out in the literary line; and there in a basket was a strip of Berlin work, of the very same Gothic pattern which Madame de Moncontour was weaving; and which you afterwards saw round the pulpit of Charles’s chapel. Rosey was welcomed most kindly by the kind ladies; and as the gentlemen sat over their wine after dinner in the summer evening, Clive beheld Rosey and Julia pacing up and down the lawn, Miss Julia’s arm around her little friend’s waist: he thought they would make a pretty little picture.
“My girl ain’t a bad one to look at, is she?” said the pleased father. “A fellow might look far enough, and see not prettier than them two.”
Charles sighed out that there was a German print, the “Two Leonoras,” which put him in mind of their various styles of beauty.
“I wish I could paint them,” said Clive.
“And why not, sir?” asks his host. “Let me give you your first commission now, Mr Clive; I wouldn’t mind paying a good bit for a picture of my Julia. I forget how much old Smee got for Betsy’s, the old humbug!”