Mr. Warrington ordered a postchaise instantly. His own horses would take him to Bromley.
“Bet you, you don't do it within the hour! bet you, you don't do it within five quarters of an hour! bet you four to one—or I'll take your bet, which you please—that you're not robbed on Blackheath! Bet you, you are not at Tunbridge Wells before midnight!” cries Lord March.
“Done!” says Mr. Warrington. And my lord carefully notes down the terms of the four wagers in his pocket-book.
Lady Maria's letter ran as follows:—
“MY DEAR COUSIN—I am fell into a trapp, which I perceive the machinations of villians. I am a prisner. Betty will tell you all. Ah, my Henrico! come to the resque of your MOLLY.”
In half an hour after the receipt of this missive, Mr. Warrington was in his postchaise and galloping over Westminster Bridge on the road to succour his kinswoman.
CHAPTER XXXVIII. Sampson and the Philistines
My happy chance in early life led me to become intimate with a respectable person who was born in a certain island, which is pronounced to be the first gem of the ocean by, no doubt, impartial judges of maritime jewellery. The stories which that person imparted to me regarding his relatives who inhabited the gem above-mentioned, were such as used to make my young blood curdle with horror to think there should be so much wickedness in the world. Every crime which you can think of; the entire Ten Commandments broken in a general smash; such rogueries and knaveries as no storyteller could invent; such murders and robberies as Thurtell or Turpin scarce ever perpetrated;—were by my informant accurately remembered, and freely related, respecting his nearest kindred, to any one who chose to hear him. It was a wonder how any of the family still lived out of the hulks. Me brother Tim had brought his fawther's gree hairs with sorrow to the greeve; me brother Mick had robbed the par'sh church repaytedly; me sisther Annamaroia had jilted the Captain and run off with the Ensign, forged her grandmother's will, and stole the spoons, which Larry the knife-boy was hanged for. The family of Atreus was as nothing compared to the race of O'What-d'ye-call-'em, from which my friend sprung; but no power on earth would, of course, induce me to name the country whence he came.
How great then used to be my naif astonishment to find these murderers, rogues, parricides, habitual forgers of bills of exchange, and so forth, every now and then writing to each other as “my dearest brother,” “my dearest sister,” and for months at a time living on the most amicable terms! With hands reeking with the blood of his murdered parents, Tim would mix a screeching tumbler, and give Maria a glass from it. With lips black with the perjuries he had sworn in court respecting his grandmother's abstracted testament, or the murder of his poor brother Thady's helpless orphans, Mick would kiss his sister Julia's bonny cheek, and they would have a jolly night, and cry as they talked about old times, and the dear old Castle What-d'ye-call-'em, where they were born, and the fighting Onetyoneth being quarthered there, and the Major proposing for Cyaroloine, and the tomb of their seented mother (who had chayted them out of the propertee). Heaven bless her soul! They used to weep and kiss so profusely at meeting and parting, that it was touching to behold them. At the sight of their embraces one forgot those painful little stories, and those repeated previous assurances that, did they tell all, they could hang each other all round.