Pray what is the meaning of this eagerness, this hesitation, this pshaing and shilly-shallying, these doubts, this tremor as he knocks at the door of Mr. Lambert's lodgings in Dean Street, and survey the footman who comes to his summons? Does any young man read? does any old one remember? does any wearied, worn, disappointed pulseless heart recall the time of its full beat and early throbbing? It is ever so many hundred years since some of us were young; and we forget, but do not all forget. No, madam, we remember with advantages, as Shakspeare's Harry promised his soldiers they should do if they survived Agincourt and that day of St. Crispin. Worn old chargers turned out to grass, if the trumpet sounds over the hedge, may we not kick up our old heels, and gallop a minute or so about the paddock, till we are brought up roaring? I do not care for clown and pantaloon now, and think the fairy ugly, and her verses insufferable: but I like to see children at a pantomime. I do not dance, or eat supper any more; but I like to watch Eugenio and Flirtilla twirling round in a pretty waltz, or Lucinda and Ardentio pulling a cracker. Burn your little fingers, children! Blaze out little kindly flames from each other's eyes! And then draw close together and read the motto (that old namby-pamby motto, so stale and so new!)—I say, let her lips read it, and his construe it; and so divide the sweetmeat, young people, and crunch it between you. I have no teeth. Bitter almonds and sugar disagree with me, I tell you; but, for all that, shall not bonbons melt in the mouth?
We follow John upstairs to the General's apartments, and enter with Mr. George Esmond Warrington, who makes a prodigious fine bow. There is only one lady in the room, seated near a window: there is not often much sunshine in Dean Street: the young lady in the window is no especial beauty: but it is spring-time, and she is blooming vernally. A bunch of fresh roses is flushing in her honest cheek. I suppose her eyes are violets. If we lived a hundred years ago, and wrote in the Gentleman's or the London Magazine, we should tell Mr. Sylvanus Urban that her neck was the lily, and her shape the nymph's: we should write an acrostic about her, and celebrate our Lambertella in an elegant poem, still to be read between a neat new engraved plan of the city of Prague and the King of Prussia's camp, and a map of Maryland and the Delaware counties.
Here is Miss Theo blushing like a rose. What could mamma have meant an hour since by insisting that she was very pale and tired, and had best not come out to-day with the rest of the party? They were gone to pay their compliments to my Lord Wrotham's ladies, and thank them for the house in their absence; and papa was at the Horse Guards. He is in great spirits. I believe he expects some command, though mamma is in a sad tremor lest he should again be ordered abroad.
“Your brother and mine are gone to see our little brother at his school at the Chartreux. My brothers are both to be clergymen, I think,” Miss Theo continues. She is assiduously hemming at some article of boyish wearing apparel as she talks. A hundred years ago, young ladies were not afraid either to make shirts, or to name them. Mind, I don't say they were the worse or the better for that plain stitching or plain speaking: and have not the least desire, my dear young lady, that you should make puddings or I should black boots.
So Harry has been with them? “He often comes, almost every day,” Theo says, looking up in George's face. “Poor fellow! He likes us better than the fine folks, who don't care for him now—now he is no longer a fine folk himself,” adds the girl, smiling. “Why have you not set up for the fashion, and frequented the chocolate-houses and the racecourses, Mr. Warrington?”
“Has my brother got so much good out of his gay haunts or his grand friends, that I should imitate him?”
“You might at least go to Sir Miles Warrington; sure his arms are open to receive you. Her ladyship was here this morning in her chair, and to hear her praises of you! She declares you are in a certain way to preferment. She says his Royal Highness the Duke made much of you at court. When you are a great man will you forget us, Mr. Warrington?”
“Yes, when I am a great man I will, Miss Lambert.”
“Well! Mr. George, then——”
“—Mr. George!”