CHAPTER VII.

“But if we wullent be contentWi’ th’ blessings sec as heav’n has sent,But obstinately wad preventWise fate’s decree,See fwoak mun just pursue the bentI’ their own bree.“What if the hand of fate, unkind,Has us’d fremtly, need we peyne?Tho’ you’ve lost your sight an’ me meyne,We cannot mend it.Let us be glad the powers deveyneNae war’ extendit.“Let us—sen leyfe is but a span—Still be as canty as we can,Rememb’ring Heaven has ordered ManTo practise patience,An’ not to murmur ’neath his han’,Leyke feckless gations.”John Stagg.

“But if we wullent be contentWi’ th’ blessings sec as heav’n has sent,But obstinately wad preventWise fate’s decree,See fwoak mun just pursue the bentI’ their own bree.

“But if we wullent be content

Wi’ th’ blessings sec as heav’n has sent,

But obstinately wad prevent

Wise fate’s decree,

See fwoak mun just pursue the bent

I’ their own bree.

“What if the hand of fate, unkind,Has us’d fremtly, need we peyne?Tho’ you’ve lost your sight an’ me meyne,We cannot mend it.Let us be glad the powers deveyneNae war’ extendit.

“What if the hand of fate, unkind,

Has us’d fremtly, need we peyne?

Tho’ you’ve lost your sight an’ me meyne,

We cannot mend it.

Let us be glad the powers deveyne

Nae war’ extendit.

“Let us—sen leyfe is but a span—Still be as canty as we can,Rememb’ring Heaven has ordered ManTo practise patience,An’ not to murmur ’neath his han’,Leyke feckless gations.”John Stagg.

“Let us—sen leyfe is but a span—

Still be as canty as we can,

Rememb’ring Heaven has ordered Man

To practise patience,

An’ not to murmur ’neath his han’,

Leyke feckless gations.”

John Stagg.

Now, it so happened, that in the house where the Sandboys had taken up their residence, there was located on the second floor one of thosemalades imaginaires, in a white robe-de-chambre, who are so popular and pretty at the present day.

Mrs. Blanche Quinine certainly dressed the part of the invalid to the life—or, rather, to the death. Robed from head to foot in the purest white, she managed to look extremely well and ill at one and the same time. She was got up with the greatest possible regard to medical effect; for, although Mrs. Quinine was naturally a plump and strong-built woman, she was costumed so artistically, and looked, as she languished on the couch, so perilously delicate, that one could not help fancying but that, with the least shock or jar to her nerves, every bone in her body would fall asunder, like the skeleton in the Fantoccini, at the sudden “bomb” of the drum.

Her complexion—which could not have been called florid even at her healthiest moments—was rendered still more pale by the “bloom” of “babies” powder, with which she never failed to indue it, previous to leaving her chamber. Her eyes—they were of the Irish grey kind—she always kept half-closed, as if from long want of rest—but then Nature had blessed Mrs. Quinine with long, dark, sweeping eye-lashes, and these were never seen to such perfection as when brought into contrast with her white skin. Her upper lip was drawn up slightly, as if in continual pain—but then Mrs. Quinine was gifted with a “remarkably fine set of teeth,” and was sufficient “woman of the world” to know that there was no use in her having such things unless she showed them. Moreover, the favourite, because the most touching, posture, of Mrs. Quinine, was with her head slightly drooping, and her cheek resting on her hand—but then the lady prided herself on the smallness of her extremities (the tips of toes could be just seen at the end of the couch, peeping from beneath her robe); and, with her arms raised, she knew that the blood could not circulate so freely in her fingers, and, consequently, that she would be saved the trouble of continually rubbing them, in order to improve their whiteness.

And, truth to say, the illness of Mrs. Quinine was as agreeable to herself as it was interesting to her doctor and acquaintances, and inconvenient to her husband. Mrs. Blanche’s prevailing belief was, that she was suffering from extreme debility, and that if she had not the very best of food to live upon, accompanied with continual change of air and scene, she felt satisfied she had but a short time to remain in this world.

In this conviction Mrs. Quinine was fully borne out by the profound opinion, most gravely delivered, with the lady’s pulse in one hand, and his gold repeater in the other, by her medical adviser—that “dear, loveable old man,” Doctor Twaddles—who added, that unless shewouldkeep herself quiet, and refrain from making the least exertion, and could at the same time be secured perfect peace of mind at home, without being thwarted in the slightest wish—as he said this, the doctor knitted the grey, bushy brows which hung down about his eyes like a Skye terrier’s, and looked death-warrants at the husband of the lady—he would not take it upon himself to answer for the consequences.

Now, Doctor Twaddles was a gentleman who had fortunately been blest with a remarkably imposing appearance.

Nature had been most bountiful to the Doctor. He had an intensely “fine bald head of his own”—round and hairless as an ostrich’s egg; and this attractive exterior had been worth a thousandfold more to him than the interior ever could have been, even had it been as full of brains as every egg is said to be full of meat. Had the Doctor depended for his advancement in life on his skill, he might have remained without a patient and without a crust; but, so to speak, standing on his bald head, he had been able to drink his wine daily, although he certainly was “no conjuror.”

The head, to which Doctor Twaddles owed so much, and which had won for him such a number of hatbands from departed patients, was fringed with silver, for the little hair that still lingered round it was white as driven snow. His features were prominent and statuesque. His coat, which was always scrupulously clean and dustless, was black and glossy as that of a mourning-coach horse; and he so far clung to the manners of the old school, as to allow his nether garments to descend only to his knees, where they were fastened by a pair of small gold buckles. His legs, which—to do Doctor Twaddles justice—were exceedingly well shaped, and perhaps accounted for the Doctor’s still clinging to the obsolete fashion of exhibiting them, were veiled by a pair of very thin gossamer-like black silk stockings, through which the flesh showed with a pinky hue; so that the medical gentleman’s calves, as he sat with them crossed one over the other, so as to give the foremost an extra plumpness, bore a strong resemblance in colour to black currant jam.

The only ornaments that the Doctor wore, were a diamond pin “set transparent,” and so pellucid as to be scarcely visible on the white neckcloth that it fastened; and a series of mourning rings on his third and little fingers, as ostentatious marks of respect from some of the most illustrious and wealthy patients he had buried; while from below his waistcoat there dangled a bunch of gold seals, almost as big as the tassel at the end of a bell-rope, and these the Doctor delighted, as he leant back in his chair, to swing up and down, like a muffin-bell, while delivering his opinion.

Doctor Twaddles was wont to increase the importance of his opinion by multiplying himself into many, and substituting, in his discourse, for the plain, humble, and honest I, the pompous, imposing and presumptuous We,—the special prerogative of monarchs and editors. Certainly this style of discourse was fraught with some few attendant advantages, even beyond that of leading the hearer to believe that the verdict pronounced was not the judgment of one solitary individual, but the unanimous opinion of an indefinite number; for when the Doctor, after due feeling of pulse and knitting of brows, said to his patients thatwemust take a blue pill and black dose, it appeared to the invalid as if the generous Physician intended to swallow half his own medicine.

But, on the other hand, some of the Doctor’s plural edicts had a particularly singular sound with them; for when he told his lady-patients thatwemust putourfeet in hot water, it seemed as if he intended indulging in a joint foot-bath with them. Equally strange and startling did it sound when he said, that “wereally must go out of town;” or, stranger still, when in a mysterious manner he declared, that “wereally must go to bed as quick as possible.”

Dr. Twaddles was a great favourite with the ladies, by whom he was invariably described as a “loveable old man.” His manner was gentle and polite as a well-fee’d pew-opener. His voice he always subdued to a complimentary sympathy, and he was especially tender in his handling of his fair patients’ pulses. He was, moreover, “remarkably fond of children,” for whom he generally carried in his pockets a small canister filled either with acidulated drops, “refined liquorice,” or “black currant lozenges.” In his habits, too, he was quite a family man, and never failed, if in his visits he found the more healthy members of the family at a “hot lunch,” of seating himself good-humouredly at the table, and declaring that hemustreally have a bit of the pudding, for he was happy to say that he was still quite a boy in his “love of sweets.”

Nor was the “advice” usually given by Dr. Twaddles of a less attractive character.

The Doctor invariably acted upon the apparently disinterested plan of objecting to the use of physic—excepting of course in the most urgent cases. Formerly, according to the old fable, curriers were prone to insist there was nothing like leather, but of late the contrary, and far more lucrative, practice has sprung up among us; and now-a-days lawyers counsel their clients on no account to “go to law,”—with the greatest possible success; and physicians rail at the exhibition of physic—to equal advantage.

With Doctor Twaddles, “diet was everything”—all maladies proceeding, according to his popular pathology, from the stomach; for patients, he had long ago discovered, never objected to being fed into good health, however strong an aversion they might have to being dosed into convalescence.

Another mode of insinuation that the Doctor adopted was to explain to the invalids, in language that they could not possibly understand, the cause of the malady for which he was prescribing, and the reason for the remedies be adopted: this he did in short family physiological lectures, which he loved to illustrate by the most ordinary objects. He would tell the astonished and half-affrighted patients how the greater part of the food taken into the system acted simply as coals to the vital fire,—how the lungs were, if he might be allowed the expression, nothing more than the grate in which the alimentary fuel was being consumed, and keeping up a continued supply of caloric for the human frame, for, that the selfsame operation was going on in the human chest as in the stove beside him.

As he said this, the bald-headed Doctor would lean back with evident self-satisfaction in the easy chair, and swing his watch-seals round and round like a watchman’s rattle. Then he usually proceeded to explain how every human creature was burning away, in the process of respiration, at the least one pound of charcoal per diem; that every meal was, when viewed with the philosophic eye, nothing more than throwing another shovelful or two of coals on to the ever-consuming fire; and that for himself, he did not care in what form the charcoal was introduced into the system, but one pound of it he must really insist upon being swallowed daily.

Mrs. Quinine—who, by-the-bye, never lost an opportunity of impressing upon strangers that her name was pronounced Keneen, even as the Beauvoirs, the Cholmondeleys, the Majoribanks, and the Cockburns, insist upon being called Beavers, Chumleys, Marchbanks, and Coburns—Mrs. Quinine, we repeat, agreed with the rest of the female world in her estimation of the dear old Doctor Twaddles. Nor was it to be wondered at, for the Doctor certainly did his best to make the lady’s indisposition as pleasant and profitable as possible to her.

True to his dietetic discipline, the loveable old Physician gave the lady to understand that all she required was nourishing food, and accordingly his prescriptions consisted of a succession of the most agreeable and toothsome delicacies; so that the fair invalid having merely to submit to a course of high feeding, gave herself up to the care of the dear Doctor with the most exemplary patience.

At six in the morning, Mrs. Quinine began her dietetic course with a cup of homœopathic cocoa, that was kept simmering through the night in a small teapot, resting (heaven knows why!) on the turrets of a china castle, in the porcelain donjon of which burnt a melancholy spirit lamp. This it was her husband’s duty to give the lady immediately her eyes were opened. Her breakfast, which was mostly taken in bed, consisted of coffee, procured, according to the express injunctions of the Doctor, from a house where analysis had proved it to be unadulterated, and made, after Doctor Twaddles’ own receipt, entirely with milk, obtained from an establishment where the Doctor could vouch for its being genuine. The coffee was sometimes accompanied with the lean of a mutton-chop, “cut thick,” and “done with the gravy in it;” sometimes with a rasher or two of “Dr. Gardner’s digestive bacon,” and sometimes with the wing of a cold chicken; while the bread of which she partook was of the unfermented kind, had fresh every day from the Doctor’s own man in the City. At twelve the invalid rose, and descended to a light lunch of either oysters, a small custard pudding, or some calf’s-foot jelly made palateable and strengthening with wine; and with this, and an egg or two beaten up with milk, and flavoured with a glass of Madeira, the delicate lady was enabled to linger on till the more substantial meal of the day.

Mrs. Quinine’s dinner, for the most part, was made up of a “little bit” of fish and a “mouthful or two” of game; for the lady condescended but seldom to partake of butcher’s meat, and, when she did so, it was solely of the more delicate and expensive kinds, known as Southdown or Welsh mutton; while the digestion of these was assisted either with “Rumford ale,” or “India pale,” or “Guinness,” or some other agreeable and stimulating form of dietetic medicine, procured from establishments which were noted for supplying only the very best articles.

Her supper was usually eaten in bed, for the invalid was strictly enjoined to retire to rest at an early hour; and long before she did so, a fire was lighted in her bed-room, so that she might not suffer from the shock of going into a cold apartment: for the same reason, the lady’s bed was well warmed previous to her entering it; and when she had been comfortably tucked up by her maid, a hot water bottle swathed in flannel was placed at her feet. Here the invalid was consoled either with a glass of warm white-wine-whey, or a posset, or arrowroot bought expressly for her at Apothecaries’ Hall; and thus the poor delicate lady was enabled to keep body and soul together until the morrow.

But the course of diet followed by the lady was far from settled, for Doctor Twaddles paid great attention to what he termed “the voice of Nature,” and consequently gave strict orders that whatever his patient fancied she was to have. Accordingly, Mrs. Quinine continually felt convinced that her system required change, and that she needed some most expensive and agreeable article of diet. Now her mouth was parched, and nothing but strawberries, though they cost a guinea a pint, or a bunch or two of hot-house grapes, could relieve her; then she would give the world for just a taste of spring lamb and new potatoes; and then nothing would satisfy her but a mouthful or two of turbot, even though it were impossible to buy less than a whole one.

All these little fancies Doctor Twaddles dignified by the name of “instincts,” and declared that they were simply the out-speakings of exhausted Nature.

Mrs. Quinine was, of course, too weak to walk abroad, so Doctor Twaddles enjoined a daily airing in the park, when the weather was mild, in an open carriage; or, if the lady preferred it, he would advise a little horse exercise; and as Mrs. Quinine thought she looked extremely well in a habit and “wide-awake,” she seldom stirred out unless mounted on a “palfrey” from the neighbouring livery stables.

Now these and other similar prescriptions of Doctor Twaddles made illness so pleasant, that, coupled with the interesting character of the invalid costume (Mrs. Quinine wore the prettiest of nightcaps, trimmed with the most expensive of lace, when she received visitors in her bed-room), the lady naturally felt disposed to feel indisposed. And it was odd how the several complaints to which she professed herself subject, came and went with the fashionable seasons. In winter she was “peculiarly susceptible” to bronchitis, so that this necessitated her being in town at the gayest period of the metropolis. Doctor Twaddles would not take upon himself to answer for the consequences if Mrs. Quinine passed a winter in the provinces: and—what was a severe calamity—the poor lady could go nowhere in the summer for change of air, but to the fashionable and lively watering-places, for she was always affected with the hay fever if she visited the more retired and consequently duller parts of the country.

The prevailing afflictions of Mrs. Quinine, however, were neuralgia, and “a general debility of the system”—indeed, she was always suffering from her “poor poor nerves;” and though subject to the greatest depression of spirits in the presence of her husband, (for that gentleman seldom remonstrated with her, but she burst into a flood of tears, and declared he was “throwing her back,”) still, before company, she was always lively enough, excepting when the visitors made tender inquiries after her health, andthenno one certainly could be more severely afflicted.

Nor was the “debility” under which the lady laboured less eccentric in its nature, for though it prevented her taking any exercise in the open air—but in a carriage or on horseback—still, when an invitation came to a dance, it in no way interfered with her polking in an “extremely low” dress half the night through.

Mr. Quinine was an eminent painter of “still-life;” and though his braces of partridges on canvas, and his dead hares, and his grapes and pine-apples “in oil” were highly admired, and fetched large sums, it was nevertheless as much as he could do to pay the physician’s fees by his game and fruit pieces. While his wife was breakfasting or supping off her dainties in bed, or “doing” the elegant and interesting invalid in white cambric on the sofa in the front room, or riding out in the Park, he, (poor man!) was painting away for dear life in his studio at the back of the house. This the clever little artist (for he stood but five foot five in his high-heeled Wellingtons) did without a murmur; for, truth to say, he doated on his dear Blanche, and strove, by making “studies” of the “birds” prescribed by Doctor Twaddles before they were cooked for his wife’s dinner, somehow or other to lessen the expenses of “the housekeeping;” for not one of the Doctor’s delectable dietetic prescriptions was ever sent to Covent Garden or Leadenhall Market to be “dispensed,” but the economic Quinine was sure to use it as a model before administering it to the patient.

But even if the little man had felt inclined to raise his voice against the course pursued, he would immediately have had the united battery of Twaddles and Blanche opened against him; and while the lady overpowered him with tears, the Doctor would have impressed upon him, in the most solemn manner, that unless Mrs. Quinine could be allowed to enjoy the greatest tranquillity of both mind and body, and be assured the gratification of her slightest wish, it was beyond the highest talent in the kingdom to undertake to say what distressing event might happen.

The opening of the Great Exhibition had operated almost as magically upon the nerves of the susceptible Mrs. Quinine, as an invitation to aThé Dansante. Her bronchitis, and the “short hacking cough” which accompanied it, had almost disappeared under the influence of the deliciouspâte de Guimauve, prescribed by Doctor Twaddles; the lady’s neuralgia had been dissipated by her steel medicine (and she had swallowed enough of that metal in her time to have admitted of being cut up into “magnum bonum” pens for the million); the “weak state of her nerves” no longer required the carriage-way in front of her house to be strewn with straw, nor the iron-hand of the street-door knocker to be embellished with a white kid glove; for the lady had grown suddenly “so much better,” that on requesting permission of Doctor Twaddles to visit the Exhibition, she declared that she felt herself quite equal to the task of exploring even its “five miles of galleries.”

Doctor Twaddles did not hesitate to confess himself delighted at the favourable change that had so evidently set in, saying it was due solely to the wonderful constitution of Mrs. Quinine; but, like a prudent man, he wished to “see how matters went on” for a short time, before he became a consenting party to her walking out—a thousand little things as he said might happen to throw her back again.

The consequence was that the lady made up her mind to take the Doctor by surprise at his next visit, and not only to be ready in the sitting-room to receive him when he called, but to be able to say that she had breakfasted down stairs, and felt herself in no way fatigued with the exertion.

Accordingly, Mrs. Quinine, for the first time since the coronation of Her Majesty Queen Victoria—when she had been obliged to be down in Parliament-street by six in the morning—had risen at daybreak. She had dressed herself with great care, so that she might be able to make the most favourable impression upon Twaddles. She had put on a clean white cambric robe-de-chambre, and left off applying the baby’s powder to her complexion; she had, moreover, such a delicate tinge of pink upon her cheeks, that it was difficult to say how the colour had got there in so short a space of time. Yesterday, she was as pale as if she had been white-washed—to-day, her cheeks were as pinky as the inner lining of a shell. Whether the change arose from the contrast of her white dress, or from the absence of the wonted “violet powder,” or whether from the faintest touch of the hare’s-foot that her prying maid had once discovered secreted in the lower tray of her dressing-case, must for ever remain one of those mysteries of the toilet that it is base presumption in Man to seek to unravel. Suffice it, Mrs. Quinine, even in her severest illness, never looked better; and as she left her bed-room, and gave a parting glance at herself in the long cheval-glass, she smiled with inward satisfaction at the appearance she made on her sudden restoration to health.

Now as the lady was slowly descending the stairs on her way to the breakfast room, Mr. Christopher Sandboys was rapidly mounting to an upper apartment, whither he had been directed by Mrs. Fokesell as the only convenient place where he could cleanse his face, hands, and clothes, from the dust of the “half-ton” of coals, in which he and the partner of his bosom had been almost smothered.

The more “particular” Mrs. Sandboys bad retired to the nearest “baths and washhouses,” convinced that nothing but a warm-bath could ever restoreherto her pristine purity.

The less fastidious Cursty, however, as we said before, was hastening up the stairs, two at a time, with a jug of warm water in his hand, intent upon a good wash and effecting that physical impossibility of scrubbing the blackamoor white; for, so intensely sable with adhering coal-dust was the complexion of Mr. Sandboys, that, truth to say, the most experienced ethnologist would, at the first glance, have mistaken that gentleman for one of the Ethiopian tribe. The lady in white had descended the first flight of stairs, and was just preparing to turn the corner of the second, when the black gentleman darted sharply round, and bounced suddenly upon her.

The nervous Mrs. Quinine was in no way prepared for the sight of a “man of colour” in such a place or at such a time. Had even her own husband pounced so unexpectedly upon her, the shock would have been sufficient to have driven all the breath out of the body of so susceptible a lady; but to find herself, without the least preparation, face to face with “a black”—as Mr. Cursty Sandboys appeared to be—was more than the shattered state of her nerves was able to bear.

The lady no sooner set eyes upon the sable monster than she screamed like a railway engine on coming to some dark tunnel, and fainted off dead into the arms of the astonished and terrified Sandboys; and as the lifeless body of the invalid fell heavily against the wretched Cursty, the dusty, grimy, coaly garments of that gentleman left their deep black mark not only upon the white cambric robe but imprinted a large black patch upon the cheek of the poor unconscious Mrs. Quinine.

The industrious little artist who called that lady his wife was busy in his studio, transferring a brace of wild ducks to canvas, previous to their being cooked for his wife’s dinner, when he heard the piercing scream of his dear Blanche. With his palette still upon his thumb, and his wet paint-brush in his hand, he darted forth, and discovered his lady insensible, in the arms of a man who, at first sight, struck him as being nothing more refined than a London coal-heaver.

Guarding his face with his palette, like a shield, the little artist rushed at the amazed Sandboys, and began attacking him with his paint-brush, as with a broadsword, while every stroke he made at the wretched Cursty’s head, left a dab of paint upon his cheeks; so that by the time the indignant Quinine had broken the brush in his repeated blows, the complexion of Mr. Sandboys was as dark and many-coloured as that of a highly tattooed Indian chief.

In such a situation it was impossible for Cursty to defend himself; to have done as much he must have let the strange lady in white drop to the ground. His gallantry bore the vigorous attack of the enraged husband for some few minutes, but when the little painter had discarded the impotent weapons of his art, and Sandboys saw him about to belabour him with his fists, his Cumbrian blood could put up with it no longer. Cursty impulsively withdrew his arm from the lady’s waist, to throw himself into an attitude of self-defence; and, as he did so, the figure of the unconscious Mrs. Quinine fell heavily on the floor.

The fall had the effect of bringing the lady to her senses, when she immediately clung to the legs of the little artist so firmly as to prevent his continuing the attack. Then, as that gentleman stooped to raise his wife from the floor, and Sandboys advanced to explain and apologize for, the misadventure, the lady no sooner set eyes on the black face that had before deprived her of her senses, than she fell into a violent fit of hysterics, and made the whole house ring with her laughter.

The noise brought the hundred-and-one lodgers from their apartments to the stairs, and, from the top to the bottom, at every landing-place, was a bunch of heads “of all nations,”—bearded, whiskered, and moustachio’d,—some in turbans, others in Greek caps, fez-caps, and nightcaps—all enjoying the scene, and mightily taken with the piebald state of Mrs. Quinine’s face and robe-de-chambre, and the party-coloured character of Mr. Sandboy’s complexion.

Nor was Mrs. Sandboys less fortunate in her endeavours to free herself from the black of the coals. Having removed the superficial grubbiness from her skin by a hasty rinse of her face and hands at the sink in the back kitchen—the only available place—but which merely had the effect of diluting her complexion down to the swarthiness of a neutral tint, she “jumped” into a cab, and, as we said before, made the best of her way to the nearest public baths.

Here she was delayed some considerable time in procuring her ticket, owing to the “rush” of Frenchmen, Germans, Russians, and Poles, congregated round the building, for the London lodging-house keepers had come to a resolution not to receive any foreigners into their establishments unless they came prepared with a certificate from some of the metropolitan washhouses. Her ticket, once obtained, however, Mrs. Sandboys proceeded to make her way down the long narrow passage, between the two rows of little bath rooms, on the “ladies’ side” of the establishment. At the end of the corridor she was met by the female attendant, who, in answer to her request for a bath, informed her that all the “warms” were full, but that she expected there’d be “a shower” shortly.

Now, the innocent Mrs. Sandboys, having never heard of such a style of bathing as the last mentioned, was naturally led to believe that the attendant alluded to nothing less than the unsettled state of the weather; so casting her eyes up to the skylight, she observed in reply, that she dare say theywouldhave a shower before long, adding, that it was just what country people wanted.

“Perhaps, then, you wouldn’t object to that there, mum?” returned attendant, as she arranged the pile of towels in the cupboard.

“Whya, as Ise here, I dunnet mind, if ’artsease be ow’r suin,” replied the simple-minded Mrs. Sandboys, still referring to the rain. “I dare say ’t’ull dui a power of guid to cwuntry fwoke.”

“Oh, yes, mum! always does a vast deal of good, and is sure to be over in no time,” returned the bath-woman, still harping on her baths.

In a few minutes the shower-bath was at liberty, and Mrs. Sandboys seated herself in a chair in the passage, while the attendant went to prepare the room for her use.

Presently the woman returned with the heavy-looking wet towels of the departed bather in her hand, hanging down like paunches; letting them “flop” on the floor, she requested Mrs. Sandboys to follow her, as the room was quite ready. Mrs. Sandboys did as desired, and was shown into a small apartment, into which she was no sooner ushered than the attendant withdrew, saying, that if the lady wanted anything there was a bell and she would please to ring.

The room was a small cabin-like apartment, with a narrow little bench against one side of it, while above this a few wooden hooks projected from the wall. A tiny “shaving-glass” hung against the partition, and the uncarpeted floor was dark-coloured with the drippings of the previous bathers. In one corner was what appeared at first sight to be a long upright cupboard, but which in reality was “the second-class” shower-bath. The door of this apparatus was placed wide open, and inside there stood a chair, while a small cord dangled from above.

Mrs. Sandboys observing nothing that appeared to her primitive mind to bear the slightest resemblance to a bath in the room, conjectured that the hot water would be brought to her in a large pan immediately it was ready.

Accordingly, she set to work to divest herself of her bonnet and cloak; and having arranged those articles on the bench, she proceeded, in her simplicity, to seat herself in the chair immediately under the shower-bath, in the corner of the little apartment, there to await the coming of the expected pan.

Her patience endured the imaginary delay for some few minutes, but at length growing wearied of her solitary situation, she got angry at the non-appearance of the attendant, and starting from her seat, seized the cord which dangled above her head, and which she—poor innocent dame!—mistook for the bell-pull.

Determined to put up with the neglect no longer, she gave a vigorous pull at the rope. Thump went the catch, and instantly down, through the colander above, came a miniature deluge, consisting of two pailsful of “cold pump,” suddenly let loose, in the form of a thousand watery wires, upon the head of the luckless Mrs. Sandboys.

What with the unexpectedness of the catastrophe, and the coldness of the water—rendered still more cold by the minuteness of its division—and the rapidity of its descent through the air, together with the perfectly novel character of the bath to the unsophisticated native of Buttermere, the poor lady was so perfectly paralysed by the icy torrent, that she was unable to escape from it; and it was not until a few moments after the cataract had ceased that she rushed out of the balneatory cupboard, gasping for breath, and fighting the air; while her clothes, shining with the wet, like a tarpaulin clung about her as tight as if she had been done up in brown paper, and her hair hung in skeins over her face, so that she had very much of the soaked appearance of a Polish hen on a rainy day.

As soon as she could fetch sufficient breath to scream, she gave a series of shrieks, and capered about the apartment after the manner of the war-dance of the wild Indians.

The peal of screams were echoed and re-echoed as they rattled against the bare walls of the building, and spread an instant alarm among the entire corps of ladies then in the bathing-rooms. One and all they imagined, from the piercing tone of the shrieks, that nothing less could have occurred than that some brute of a man—some impudent Frenchmen, or a wretch of a Turk perhaps—through accident or design—had found his way to the ladies’ side of the establishment, and taken some poor dear by surprise. Accordingly they, one after another, repeated the screams of the original screamer—shouting, “It’s a man! It’s a man! It’s a man!”

In an instant the female attendant came rushing down the corridor. Such of the lady bathers as were dressed suddenly opened the doors of their little apartments, and stood with them ajar, so that they might slam them to again in case of danger; while those who were unable to make their appearance, jumped upon the bench within, and popped their bald-looking heads, encased as they were in yellow greasy-looking bathing-caps, over the doors, and squinted into the passage like so many birds from the house-tops; and as they saw the male authorities come hurrying towards the point of alarm, they each uttered a sudden “Ho!” and bobbed down again into the privacy of their cabins, as jauntily as so many “Jacks-in-the-box.”

The female attendant endeavoured to explain to the infuriated Mrs. Sandboys that “it was all a mistake;” but that lady felt convinced that the whole affair was nothing more nor less than a preconcerted trick, and that a cistern full of water, at the very least, had been emptied upon her, through a trap-door in the ceiling, by some wicked wretch secreted over head; and that this had been done simply because the people saw she was—like the railway milk—fresh from the country.

In vain did the authorities—who with difficulty were able to sustain that solemnity of countenance which is so necessary a part of the duties of all public functionaries—beg to assure the lady that the apparatus in question was really a form of bath—a shower—belonging to the establishment, much approved of, and highly recommended by the faculty.

But Mrs. Cursty was fully satisfied that no person in his senses would dream of coming to such a place toenjoya shower, when, if they were that way inclined, they might, on any wet day, have one for nothing. Moreover, she begged to be informed, with an air of triumph,—just to let the Londoners see that she was not quite so simple as they seemed to fancy her,—“if showers were so highly recommended by the faculty, what people carried umbrellas for?” and as she made the overpowering inquiry, she, in the ardour of the discussion, gave so self-satisfied a shake of her head, that she sprinkled the water from her hair all over the by-standers, like a Newfoundland dog just emerged from a river.

It was impossible even for the grave functionaries to keep serious any longer, but their smiles served only to make the assurance of Mrs. Sandboys “doubly sure” that a wicked trick had been played upon her; so, putting on her bonnet and cloak—wet as she was—she left the establishment, vowing that she would have them all up before a magistrate, and well punished for their shameful conduct towards a poor lone countrywoman like herself.

A cab soon conveyed the wretched, and shivering, and moist Mrs. Sandboys back to her lodgings. There she and her dear Cursty once more endeavoured to console one another—but consolation was bootless in the state of the Sandboys’ wardrobe.

Accordingly, while Aggy borrowed a “change” of the landlady, and proceeded to squeeze her corpulent figure into the thin Mrs. Fokesell’s “things,” Jobby was dispatched to the railway station to see after the three-and-twenty boxes that constituted the family luggage, with full instructions (given at Mrs. Fokesell’s advice)—provided no tidings of the missing packages could be obtained at the “goods department”—to scour the whole country round, by means of the electric telegraph, in search of them.

To prevent accidents, however, Elcy was made to write down all that was wanted, together with an accurate description of all that was missing; and, as she did so, the tender-hearted girl did not fail to include a graphic account of her dear pet Psyche, whom, she felt convinced, must be reduced to a positive “bag of bones”—a canine “living skeleton”—by this time.

The youth, as directed, took the Hungerford omnibus, and made his way, without much difficulty, to the railway station. There, he could hear nothing as to the whereabouts of the family boxes; accordingly he proceeded to the Telegraph Office, and having handed in the written instructions, he set out on his return home.

As he passed under the archway of the station, it so happened that “a school of Acrobats” were exhibiting their feats within the open space in front of the two large railway hotels. Jobby, with his mouth wide agape, stood outside the gates watching the posturers pile themselves, three men and a boy, high on one another’s shoulders.

The exhibition was as new as it was exciting to the lad. With a thrill of pleasurable amazement the youth saw for the first time in his life the “pole balancer” in his suit of spangled cotton “fleshings,” and the tawdry black velvet fillet round his well-oiled hair, lie on his back on a small handkerchief of carpet, and balance and catch and twirl the heavy pole on the soles of his feet. Then, almost breathless with ecstasy, he beheld the “bending tumbler” slowly bend his body back till his head reached the ground, and proceed to pick up pins with his eyelids. Next, he witnessed “the equilibrist” balance, spinning plates high in the air, and burning paper-bags upon his chin, and catch huge cannon balls from a height in a cup upon his head—and as all this went on, and he heard the sound of the music, and looked at the glittering costumes of the performers, Jobby was entranced with positive rapture. He had never seen, never heard, never dreamt of anything half so beautiful.

Nor could he scarcely credit that they were human like himself, till he saw the men put their shabby black coats over their spangles, and as one shouldered the pole, and the other carried the box, stroll off in close conversation with “the drum and pipes,” and a troop of pinafored boys at their heels, to some fresh quarter of the town.

Jobby stood for a moment looking after the crowd, longing, but fearing, to follow them. The temptation, however, of once more beholding their marvellous feats was too much for him—so, as he saw them turn the corner, he took to his heels, and hurried after the troop.

There for the present we must leave him.

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