CHAPTER X.
OUT OF AN ALBUM—ON LOSS OF PATIENCE—MRS. FRIMMELY's SUGGESTION—A DAY-DANCE.
uery—What shall we do?
We lounge over the room undecidedly. Mrs. Boodels thinks it's still raining. Pouring. Miss Bella says, “What a bother!” Miss Medford remembers having heard a problem worthy the Professor's attention. We pause in our indecision, and she reads from her album.
What circumstance most justifies loss of patience?
The Professor of Scientific Economy replies, a smoky chimney.
⁂ He explains that he is thinking of a bitterly cold day in winter when he wanted to sit in his study, and write a treatise on the Amount of change to be obtained out of a Roman Denarius, B.C. 108. On this occasion his chimney would smoke, and he had to sit with the door and window open. Then the smoke choked him; next, the draught gave him cold; then his fingers became frozen; finally, his feet were like icicles in refrigerating stockings. After standing this for about two hours, he could not help saying. . . . . . .
Evidently a case where the Recording Angel would not even chance a blot.
Happy Thought.—What a mess that book will be in. Perhaps illegible!!
⁂
Miss Adelaide Cherton thinks that to find a wasp inside the only peach on the wall was most provoking.
Byrton's Opinion. Hot coffee over your new cords on a “show-meet” day.
It strikes me that to come on shore after taking a swim in the river, and not to be able to find your clothes, is a circumstance quite justifying loss of patience.
Apropos of this, Chilvern says he recollects a fellow—Smith, a friend of his—bathing, and when he came out he couldn't find his clothes. So, as some people were coming along the bank, Smith retired to the stream, and Chilvern went to search for the habiliments. The fact was, that Smith had gone down with the stream, and his clothes had been consequently left a mile behind.
Chilvern found the clothes, then returned, but couldn't find Smith.
The current had taken him down stream another mile.
So it might have gone on; had not the river been a tidal one (or worked on some peculiar principles, which Chilvern doesn't explain)—and, the stream changing, back brought Smith with it, and then he was happy,—only with a cold for ever after.
Mrs. Boodels being informed of the discussion through her ear-trumpet, said that losing a thimble was quite sufficient to justify any loss of patience.
The gentlemen present observe, that they have no doubt it is so, but they have had no experience.
Milburd thinks that the button off your collar, or, losing your stud, at the last moment, is the most trying thing.
Bella Cherton, after walking to the window several times and seeing no sign of fine weather, says, “I'll tell you what I consider most justifies loss of patience.”
“What?” we inquire.
Note. This sort of reply rather throws a damper over efforts to be genial. Mrs. Boodels wishes it to be repeated to her through the trumpet. Damper through the ear trumpet.
Mrs. Orby Frimmely says, that trying to get through your favourite valse with a bad partner. . . Ah!
Mrs. O. F.'s Happy Thought. “By the way, as it is so wet, why not have a dance? Mr. Medford can play.”
Seconded by Byrton, and supported by the ladies.
Adjournment to Drawing-Room. Odd. We suddenly fall into our ball-room manners. Talking to partners quietly. Going out to get cool,—on the stairs.
Byrton is dancing with Mrs. Orby Frimmely. Mr. Orby Frimmely being engaged in town is not here.
Byrton is certainly very much struck, in fact he says so; and shows it. However, he is always being struck, always saying so, always showing it, and . . . that's all.
Jenkyns Soames has retired to his room; probably to write to Rothschild.
Chilvern is Miss Cherton's partner.
Milburd is Miss Bella's.
I don't dance. I debate with myself whether I can or not. I used to. In a waltz for instance, I know two steps out of three. The third is where I fail. Dances change so. My waltz is the Deux temps, for the simple reason that the Deux temps does also for the galop, that is, it does for my galop.
I flatter myself on my galop. Here, so to speak, I am at home. If Medford can only play a galop, and if Miss Bella will give up Milburd, or Milburd give her up, why je suis son homme. I am her man.
Medford will do a galop, he says; and immediately before I have time to ask if Bella—if Miss Bella . . . he strikes into it and the dancers change their step, and are whirling round and round, then up and down. I can't stop them. As the opera books say, “Rage! Madness! Despair!”
I catch her eye.
She understands, I am sure.
She will . . .
If she does . . .
She stops, making some excuse to Milburd and looking at me. (Aha! Milburd! you think yourself such a lady killer, that a . . this to myself, thinkingly).
Happy Thought.—To go up to her and say, “You promised me.”
I do it.
“Did I?” she says.
Milburd gives in, unexpectedly, and relinquishes her.
Aha! we are off! Round and round . . . carpet rather bad to dance on . . . up and down . . . I feel that we are just skirting chairs, and that another inch will bring down the fire-irons——we put on the pace . . . I haven't danced for . . . well, for some considerable time . . . we nearly come bang against the piano . . . my fault . . beg pardon . . . but we won't stop . . .
“Oh no!” says Bella . . . and we don't stop.
A little quieter, just to, as it were, regain consciousness, for everything is becoming blurred—(jerky sentences while dancing) . . . “It's more difficult . . . to steer when . . . there are a few . . . than when . . .” “Yes,” says Miss Bella, who quite understands. (Myself tenderly.) “Do you . . . like dancing?” . . . “Yes,” . . . (whirl round, up and down . . . then) . . . “This dance?” . . . What? . . . (whirl round just to get the steam up again for the question, and put it sotto voce, finding myself close to her ear—such a pretty little ear—made to be whispered into). “Do you like this dance?” . . . “Very much.” (My heart is fluttering nervously, like a stray bird under a skylight) . . . “With anyone?” . . . (No answer . . . My question means do you prefer ME to dance with, and not only to dance with, but . . .)
The music ceases. Medford is tired. We all thank him.
If it hadn't been for the gong . . .
But at all events the wet morning is over.
CHAPTER XI.
A NIGHT SURPRISE.
oodels and Milburd knock at my door at 2.30 a.m., after I've been asleep two hours, and wake me up to tell me that they had thought of a Pleasure of Poverty: it was, Milburd said,
To think that you can't be worse off, while you hope that others may.
I say . . “Oh . . . don't bother—I mean—yes—capital . . . go to . . . bed,” and turning round, try to sleep again.
The Deputation thanks me and withdraws.
“What an idiotic thing to do,” I say to myself . . . . “What a foolish thing” . . . . getting more wakeful . . . “What a cruel thing . . . . Hang it! it's positively selfish . . . it's” . . . turning for the fifth time, and my pillow becoming as hot as a blister . . . “Confound Boodels . . . and Milburd . . . it's all his doing, I know” . . . sitting up in bed.
It occurs to me that counting one hundred and forty backwards, and then getting out and drinking a glass of water, is a capital way of inducing sleep . . .
Odd, but in Milburd and Boodels coming to rouse me at this time, I find a solution to the other question that we had occupied part of our morning in discussing.
What circumstance justifies loss of patience?
Why, loss of sleep.
CHAPTER XII.
OUR LIBRARY—BUSTS—DISTINGUISHED CHARACTERS—MELANCHOLY—GUESSES—SOAMES—MRS. BOODELS AGAIN—MILBURD—HIS JOKE—A NUISANCE.
f all the melancholy objects of Art Busts are the most so.
Do you want a sensation of Miserable Melancholy?
Take, yourself——
Off to a dusty library of bookshelves, chiefly empty, and the remainder having an occasional medical treatise in the original Latin, with diagrams of the human frame, no fire, rain pouring, damp mist over the landscape, no pens, ink, or even paper to tear up into fanciful shapes, and nothing for company except busts of celebrated people, looking like the upper part of the ghosts of half-washed chimney-sweepers.
After a time, they only resemble one thing, a collection of several homicidal criminals.
Sit before a bust, any bust, under the above circumstances.
You wonder to what you would have condemned this hideous creature had he been brought up, in his lifetime, before you, as a magistrate.
On every feature is stamped Ruffian. This man must have been hung, were there any justice in the world.
No. This bust is of the late venerable and excellent Archbishop Snuffler.
Is it possible. And all these other savage-looking creatures? . . . “Are,” says my informant in the damp library who only comes in for a minute, “Archbishops, Bishops, celebrated Philanthropists, Doctors, and men of science.”
And here they are perched up aloft, like overgrown cherubs, whose wings have been taken off by some surgical operation.
Happy Thought.—If you want to be revenged on somebody, and don't mind expense, have his portrait painted with all his defects glaringly rendered, and present it, as a mark of esteem, to his family.
On his fiftieth birthday give him a bust of himself to be placed in his hall. Depend upon it you've punished him.
Jenkyns Soames, our Professor of Scientific Economy, was talking of the Zoological Gardens.
“I dispute,” says he, “the fact of the Hyæna laughing.”
“Why?”
“Why? Solvitur ambulando, or rather non ambulando, for I've stood in front of his cage for half an hour, and I've never seen him laugh once.”
This was repeated to Mrs. Boodels.
“Yes,” says she, “that's very probable. But when Mr. Jenkyns went away * *”
Milburd tried to cap this by asking as a conundrum “why the Hyæna wouldn't laugh in your face?”——
As Mrs. Boodels rose, the ladies had to go out too, so no one stopped for the answer. He caught me alone in a corner and told me what it was. I think he said that it was because the Hyæna was an Hy-brid animal. He explained that he meant “high-bred.”
Happy Thought.—To say, “Oh, that's very old.” This has the same effect on a conundrum-maker as the most brilliant repartee.
Unless it leads him to come to you three times a day ever afterwards, with fresh ones, all hot as it were from the baker's, and ask you perpetually, “Well, is this old?”
(Bringing more Material for Joke).
CHAPTER XIII.
MUSIC—MEDFORD—MILBURD'S SONG—CONSEQUENCE—OPINIONS—NOTE—COMPLIMENTS—EPIGRAM—THE DAMP FIREWORK.
Milburd asks Medford to accompany him in a “little thing of his own.” The ladies have taken their turn at the piano, and Medford himself has favoured us with half an hour's worth of his unpublished compositions. Milburd announces his song as “A Waiting Game.”
(Suggested by “A Dreary Lot is Mine.”)
Mrs. Boodels wants to know if he won't kindly sing it to her through her ear-trumpet. He promises to do so, one day when they are alone.
SECOND VERSE.
A waiting game is mine,
I'll stay until my debts are paid,
The contract then I'll sign.
Unless you've fifty thousand pounds,
To bring me as a dower,
If so . . . . those are sufficient grounds
For wedding—now—this hour.
Nobody asks him to sing again. Mrs. Frimmely says, “She only cares for French songs. English comic songs,” she adds, “are so vulgar.” Settler for Milburd. Glad of it.
After this Milburd says he's got another; a better one.
Happy Thought (expressed in a complimentary manner).—A good song, like yours, is better for keeping.
Note to Myself.
The age for compliments is gone. The courtly and polished Abbé, who would have said the above epigrammatically when it would have been considered remarkably witty, has passed away. No one believes in compliment. It has no currency, except done in a most commonplace way. But the epigrammatic compliment, the well-prepared impromptu, the careful rehearsed inspiration, is out of date. Now-a-days there are no wits, and no appreciation of The Wits. Conversation is damped by a bon-mot. An awful silence follows the most brilliant jeu de mot, as sombre as the darkness after a forked flash, or as the gardens at the Crystal Palace after the last bouquet of fireworks.
Conversation is like a boot. When damped it loses its polish.
[The above remarks occasioned by no one having taken any notice of my epigram, and Milburd only replying to it by saying, “Oh! bosh!”]
I've just tried to draw a firework in my pocket-book. It doesn't exactly express my idea. But is a very good sketch of a joke which has failed.
This evening I am melancholy.
CHAPTER XIV.
OUR POSTAL ARRANGEMENTS.
nock at the door.
Complaints made to the President of Happy-Thought Hall of the non-delivery or late delivery of letters, and newspapers.
I promise to see to it.
“George,” I say to our servant, “let me see the postman when he comes.” George grins, says Yes. Exit George.
Why does he grin?
Half an hour after this I am in the yard. I hear a shrill piping voice. It says, “It carnt b' elped n'ow. 'Taint no farlt o' mine. It's them at th' office as is irregylar. I says to them, I do, allus; come now, I says, you ain't to your time, I says, which you carnt say to me all the years as I've been up-a-down on this road, summer nor winter, and no one never lost nothin' nor complainin'. Tell the gendlemun fromme as——” here I step in, and interrupt an old woman talking. I ask. “Has the postman come?”
The old woman with a bag bobs a curtsey, and says,
And so she is; and has “carried the bag”—only without the dishonesty of a Judas—for the last twenty years. Wonderful old lady. About seventy, and walks twelve miles, at least, in all weathers, every day of her life.
A little girl, her granddaughter, walks by her side, and a sharp terrier accompanies the pair.
Poor old woman! blind.
I am disarmed.
The little girl informs me that “it's the folks at the post office as is wrong.”
Generally true.
“Good-bye old Martha, and here's a Christmas-box for you.”
“Ar, thank'ee kindly, sir.”
CHAPTER XV.
MRS. BOODELS—BOODELS—HIS GRANDMOTHER'S OBSERVATION—HER FATE SEALED—THE COMEDY—HER DEPOSITION—NEW PROPOSAL—AWKWARD—MILBURD'S RELATION—INVITATION—THE DINNER HOUR—RECOMMENDATION—DECISION.
Being deaf, Mrs. Boodels has, as our friend Captain Byrton expresses it, six to four the best of us. Repartees through an ear-trumpet lose their sting. And then you can't in politeness, and in all respect, sting an old lady of seventy-five.
The other evening Boodels says, blushingly, that some of his friends tell him that he is just the man to write a comedy.
This is repeated to his grandmother through the trumpet.
“Yes,” she says, quietly; “I've heard John's friends say that he can write a comedy, and I've heard 'em add that they hope he won't.”
⁂
Since this we've not heard any more of Boodels' comedy. I rather think that he's got it all ready to read to us.
Next morning after this observation of Mrs. Boodels, her grandson comes with Milburd to my room.
Boodels says he thinks his grandmother's a little too old for the work.
I reply that we all like her, and that she's a charming old lady.
Milburd agrees.
Boodels says, rather testily, of course she's all that, but we want some one more sprightly, and having to repeat everything to her through the trumpet is tedious.
We own that we should not have liked to have been the first to hazard this objection, but as he has made it himself, why we perhaps on the whole agree with him rather than not.
Boodels is satisfied with this craftily qualified assent.
“The old girl,” he says,—(odd, how she's suddenly come down in his estimation—down to “old girl”)—“has told me this morning that the late hours are beginning to tell upon her, and she wants to dine earlier!”
Ah! there we are touched nearly. Alter the dinner hour! Never!
“She's accustomed at home, you see,” continues her grandfilial relation, “to dine at one o'clock or thereabouts, and tea at six.”
Nursery hours! we couldn't think of it.
“Of course not,” returns Boodels; “so I said to her . . . . She was rather huffed at the idea of my calling them ‘nursery hours,’ and wanted to know if I meant that she was in her second childhood. In fact,” says Boodels, blurting it all out, “there's been a row, and the old girl threatened to take away the Chertons.”
“Pooh!” from both of us.
“But if she goes—” commences Boodels, who has a strict and severe sense of propriety.
“If she does,” cries Milburd, “look here! I've got it.” He subdues his excitement, and proceeds, “I've a letter from the Regniatis.”
“Regniatis! let's see,” considers Boodels. “They're relations of yours?”
“Yes. Count Regniati, an Italian, and the jolliest fellow in the world”—he adds this as a set-off against his nationality, which may, he evidently thinks, suggest secret societies, daggers, carbonari—“married my Aunt. The Chertons are also some sort of distant connection. At least they often stay with Madame. So that she'll be their chaperone. I'm sure you'll like 'em immensely,” he adds, “and the Signor, my uncle, is first-rate.” We decide. Abdication of Mrs. Boodels and enthronement of the Regniati dynasty.
“Good,” exclaims Boodels. “Then I'll tell my grandmother to-day. I don't want to do anything unpleasant”—we agree with him, such a feeling does him honour—“and I'll take the opportunity of her wanting to go up to an aurist to congédier her. After all the old lady will be much happier away, and I'll tell her that we shall be so glad to see her whenever she likes to turn up again, that is, if the Hall is still going on.”
We admit that nothing could be more courtly, more diplomatic than this.
Milburd is to invite his Uncle and Aunt. And that's settled.
CHAPTER XVI.
FRESH ARRIVALS—DESCRIPTION—A HISTORY.
Mrs. Boodles is deposed and retires, vice Madame Regniati promoted.
Madame Regniati arrives alone. “The Signor,” as his nephew Milburd always affectionately terms him, “has not come by the same train.”
“It is just like Mr. Regniati,” observes Madame, severely. “He said he'd leave me to look after the luggage. Mr. Regniati has no notion of even looking after himself. Probably he has lost himself. My luggage has come with me. I have his ticket, and I know he has no money, as he has spent his allowance this week. When Mr. Regniati has found himself once more, I have no doubt he will appear.”
All this she delivers in disjointed sentences, with a little pause or a cough between each. She speaks without any action, and generally statuesquely. She prides herself evidently on her classicality. She is more the antique Roman than the English dame. It was this, Milburd, in smoking-room confidence, informs us, that first inspired her with a liking for Mr. Regniati, whom she met in Rome. Mr. Regniati was then a sculptor, and might have gained, ultimately, a considerable reputation, if his good-natured indolence, and his social qualities, had not, in the end, proved too much for his undoubted talent. Being possessed of small private means, he would probably have remained an amateur, seeing, not only without a particle of envy, but with a smile of positive encouragement, others far less able than himself, pass him on the road of art, and occupy pedestals which ought to have been his. One evening meeting Miss Milburd at an artistic reunion, she overheard him express his admiration of her classical lineaments. Being mistress of her own fortunes, and of her own fortune, she simply determined to many Mr. Regniati; and did so. She foresaw his future greatness. She looked forward to his name being enrolled among those whom art has made illustrious. She was doomed to disappointment.
Transplanted to British soil, the Signor found himself a gentleman at large. He abandoned the chisel for the gun, and prided himself upon becoming a sportsman and an agriculturist. From the moment of his being thus thoroughly acclimatised, Madame Regniati gave him up, so to speak, then and there, as a bad job. The Signor's private means were not anything like enough to supply his peculiarly English tastes, and his wife would not “fritter her money away,” she said, “in pigsties.”
So she decided upon giving up their rural retreat which she had chosen for the purpose of affording Mr. Regniati every opportunity of communing with nature, and took him up to London. Here she obtained a small house, with a studio, built out at the back by its previous artistic occupant, where she fondly hoped Mr. Regniati would once more devote himself to the study of the fine arts.
Her husband now appeared to be inclined towards her way of thinking. The more, because his funds were in her hands, and she “allowanced” him.
He commenced a group, several sizes larger than life, of The Judgment of Paris.
The process was slow, and, apparently, far from inexpensive. Moreover it was excessively fatiguing, and Madame, proud of her husband's design, and sanguine as to his future, willingly permitted the Signor to take occasional relaxation in the country.
He was obliged to come to her from time to time for money. The allowance was insufficient.
This gradually aroused her suspicions. She had permitted the introduction of living models to the studio, out of regard for the necessities of art, but it was her invariable custom to bring her work thither, while Mr. Regniati was engaged in modelling from nature. He was seldom out of her sight, nor did he, indeed, appear at all anxious to be other than most eager for her companionship, except on the holiday occasions, when he sought invigoration in the country. Then he represented that he loved solitude, and generally selected a time when Madame was too indisposed even to offer to join him in his excursion.
Madame became, in fact, jealous.
Being a woman of deeds, not words, she determined to ascertain the truth, before she startled the Signor with the expression of a suspicion.
The Signor asked her for money. She gave it to him cheerfully, regretted that her rheumatism was so bad as to confine her to her room, begged him to stay away until he felt quite restored and able to go on with Minerva's toes (he had got so far with the three goddesses, but, having commenced with the toes, this was not much as representing the labour of nearly a year and a half), and wished him good-bye.
The Signor went to Dunby Dale, a small, out-of-the-way village in Hampshire, totally unaware of being closely followed by Madame's maid, who gave the information, and then by Madame herself.
The Signor was traced to a small farm-house, beautifully situated, and in the most perfect order.
He was welcomed, respectfully, at the door by a fresh-looking, buxom country wench.
The following conversation was overheard.
[The Signor's English is far from perfect.
He divides every syllable, more Italiano, and talks not unmusically in rather a high key. Most of his conversation is, as it were, written for a tenor, and he strains at it like a low baritone. Figurez-vous a portly gentleman, brown as walnut juice, dark black hair, moustache and beard. Teeth flashing and brilliant, like a set of impromptu epigrams in the mouth of a wit. Laughing lips, and eyes beaming with good-nature. Height five feet seven. Voilà le Signor Regniati.]
“Ah! Mar-ree!”—this was to Mary the maid who had received him. “You look all rose and pink. And 'ow does my leet-tel Clo-teel-da? She is vell, I 'ope?”
“She gets on beautiful, sir,” was the answer. “She's thrivin' wonderful.”
“Oh!” exclaimed the Signor, lighting up, and evidently intensely delighted. “I am so glad. I come avays to see 'er. Tell me,” he continued, becoming suddenly serious, “'ave she 'ad 'er bart?” [The Signor almost sings his sentences. He went up the scale to the verb “'ad,” and took a turn down again three notes to the noun “bart,” which, by the way, was his way of pronouncing “bath.”]
“Every day, sir,” replied the maid, cheerfully, “and her skin looks as white as a young infant's.”
Again the Signor was in ecstasies.
“Come!” he cried, “let us go an' see 'er.”
A good deal of the Signor's conversation resembles easy lessons in one syllable for beginners. His “let us go and see 'er,” was delivered with a slight halt between each word, like a child in a state of doubt over a column in a spelling book.
They went into the house, and out, by the back way.
Madame Regniati soon discovered the worst. When the Signor had gone, she called at the house herself, and found that the Signor rented a lodging of the farmer, and, kept a pig.
Though forced to give up the country, he could not deny himself this agricultural pleasure. His first pig had won a prize, and the farmer showed Mrs. Regniati the account of the Cattle Show in a local paper, with Mr. Regniati exhibiting under the name of “Tomkins,” and then, in the fulness of his heart, he brought out a silver medal, tied to a blue riband and preserved in a case of morocco leather, on which was inscribed that this represented the second prize for pigs awarded by the Judges to Mr. Regniati, as “Tomkins,” for the sow Selina, and then followed date, place, and other particulars.
After this discovery there was an arrangement. Mr. Regniati was allowed a small farm-house in the country, on condition of his not wasting money upon it, and only taking to it as a recreation, while the greater portion of his time he would be, henceforth, in honour bound to dedicate to his Art.
The Signor accepted these terms.
In six years' time he had got as far as the third pair of knees,—Juno's,—and had obtained the first prize for pigs, and the second for bullocks, at a County Show.
This success lured him on to his ruin. At the expiration of ten years, Venus had a head on her shoulders, and he had almost lost his own. There had been years of disease among the cattle, insects in the turnips, and rottenness in the heart of his mangels; his expenses had become enormous, the Inspector of Nuisances had complained of the state of the drains round and about his farm, his oxen had strayed, two bulls had got loose and had maimed several people for life, whom he had to pension as long as they were unable to work,—and their inability to work appeared to increase with the duration of the pension. In fact Mr. Regniati's model farm promised to eventuate in a gigantic failure. At this crisis Madame stepped in and saved the citadel.
She simply got rid, sur-le-champ, of the live-stock, man and beast.
Then she disposed of the house and outbuildings.
The Signor went down, and sat, like Marius, or rather like a second Cincinnatus, when, on returning from the metropolis, he found that his farm had gone utterly to the bad.
After this, Signor Regniati went hard to work on Juno. A year's toil brought its reward. Madame his wife was pleased to sit as his model, and, ultimately, to purchase for him a small game preserve, and a shooting box in Bedfordshire, at an easy distance from town.
It was on his way to Budgeby Box that the Signor came to us at Happy-Thought Hall, and brought Madame; or rather, that Madame came and brought the Signor.
Milburd was now the Signor's constant companion. Madame trusted, she said, Mr. Regniati to his nephew. Mr. Regniati, she adds, is a child. “I expect no responsibility from him. I look to Richard for that. Richard must take care of his uncle, and go out shooting with him, as I will not have,” she says, emphatically “I will not have Mr. Regniati going out with a gun, alone.”
If Mr. Regniati is present when these remarks are made, he merely smiles, quite happily, stretches out his arms, and exclaims, in a tone of the slightest remonstrance possible, “Oh, my dear! I can shoot! I am quite safe.”
“Yes,” returns Madame, “and I mean you to keep so.”
“I vas born for a sport-mans,” Mr. Regniati observes to us.
I notice that he is fond of putting words into a sort of plural of his own invention.
“You're lucky, Mr. Regniati,” observes his wife, “to find that out at all events. For my part I can't make out why you were ever born at all.”
Again the Signor smiles, and says in cheerful remonstrance, “Oh my dear!” but he is too wise to continue a conversation which would only involve an argument, and perhaps, the loss of his “lee-tel shoot-box at Bod-ge-bee.”
Dick, i.e. Milburd, benefits considerably by this arrangement. His aunt pays all the expenses (trusting Mr. Regniati with no money), as long as he and his uncle are together.
“Richard,” she says, “is clever and careful. My husband is a schoolboy. I can only trust a schoolboy with a tutor.”
We are at dinner when the Signor arrives.
He enters in a state of great excitement.
“Ah!” he exclaims, “'Ow do you do?” this to everyone generally. “Ah Deeck!” this to Milburd, reproachfully. “Vy you not meet me at ze Rail-vays?”
“You'd better go and dress yourself, Mr. Regniati,” remarks Madame, drily, finishing her soup, “or you won't have any dinner.”
“My dear!” he cries, “No din-ner! I am so 'ongry. I 'ave no-sing to eat since my break-fast.”
“You should have been here before,” says Madame.
“My Jo!” he exclaims, in a very high key, almost between laughing and crying. I find out that “My Jo,” is his rendering of “By Jove!”—a very harmless oath—“My Jo! I could not!” Then he enters appealingly to us into an explanation. “Madame Regniati vas in ze car-ri-age, and she say to me, Mr. Regniati, she say, I did not see ze boxes-put-in,”—this is all one word.—“I say my dear eet ees all right. She say No you go see it, for I tinks not. Den I go. I say vere ees my box, but I see no-sing, no veres, den ven I try to find my car-ri-age again ze train goes off. I jomp into a carri-age and a man say you most not do zat, but I tomble in. I do not know vere de train goes to, but it vas not to come 'ere and ven I stop—My Jo!—dey ask-a-me for my tee-kets. ‘I 'ave not zem,’ I say, ‘my vife 'as zem.’ Zen zey say to me I most buy vun. My Jo! I say I can-not! I 'ave no money. I vant I say to go to Blackmeer. Oh zey say zat is on a-noser line, in a-noser contry. My Jo! I say to 'im vot shall I do? Zen I meet a gentle-mans who know me and he say——”
“Nonsense, Mr. Regniati. I believe you stopped at the refreshment-room in London——”
“Oh My Jo! my dear! I as-sure you,” he commences, but Madame cuts him short.
“Go and dress, Mr. Regniati,” she says, “and don't be long. Dick, show Mr. Regniati his room, and bring him down in five minutes. Don't let him chatter.”
Milburd takes his uncle out, and we hear him repeating his story to his nephew, as he crosses the hall, and ascends the stairs.