Mrs. Pringle’s own establishment, we are sorry to say, soon furnished her with the severest cause of disquietude; for having always acted upon the principle of having pretty maids—the difference, as she said, between pretty and plain ones being, that the men ran after the pretty ones, while the plain ones ran after the men—having always, we say, acted upon the principle of having pretty ones, she forgot to change her system on the return of her hopeful son; and before she knew where she was, he had established a desperate liaison with a fair maid whose aptitude for breakage had procured for her the sobriquet of Butter Fingers. Now, Butter Fingers, whose real name was Disher—Jane Disher—was a niece of our old friend, Big Ben, now a flourishing London hotel landlord, and Butter Fingers partook of the goodly properties and proportions for which the Ben family are distinguished. She was a little, plump, fair, round-about thing, with every quality of a healthy country beauty.
Fine Billy was first struck with her one Sunday afternoon, tripping along in Knightsbridge, as she was making her way home from Kensington Gardens, when the cheap finery—the parasol, the profusely-flowered white gauze bonnet, the veil, the machinery laced cloak, the fringed kerchief, worked sleeves, &c., which she kept at Chickory the greengrocer’s in Sun Street, and changed there for the quiet apparel in which she left Mrs. Pringle’s house in Curtain Crescent—completely deceived him; as much as did the half-starting smile of recognition she involuntarily gave him on meeting. Great was his surprise to find that such a smart, neat-stepping, well-set-up, bien chaussée beauty and he came from the same quarters. We need not say what followed: how Properjohn couldn’t see what everybody else saw; and how at length poor Mrs. Pringle, having changed her mind about going to hear Mr. Spurgeon, caught the two sitting together, on her richly carved sofa of chaste design, in the then non-commissioned put-away drawing room. There was Butter Fingers in a flounced book-muslin gown with a broad French sash, and her hair clubbed at the back à la crow’s-nest. It was hard to say which of the three got the greatest start, though the blow was undoubtedly the severest on the poor mother, who had looked forward to seeing her son entering the rank of life legitimately in which she had occupied a too questionable position. The worst of it was, she did not know what to do—whether to turn her out of the house at the moment, and so infuriate the uncle and her son also, or give her a good scolding, and get rid of her on the first plausible opportunity. She had no one to consult. She knew what “Want-nothin’-but-what’s-right Jerry” would say, and that nothing would please Mrs. Half-a-yard-of-the-table Joe more than to read the marriage of Billy and Butter Fingers.
Mrs. Pringle was afraid too of offending Big Ben by the abrupt dismissal of his niece, and dreaded if Butter Fingers had gained any ascendancy over William, that he too might find a convenient marrying place as somebody else had done.
Altogether our fair friend was terribly perplexed. Thrown on the natural resources of her own strong mind, she thought, perhaps, the usual way of getting young ladies off bad matches, by showing them something better, might be tried with her son. Billy’s début in the metropolis had not been so flattering as she could have wished, but then she could make allowances for town exclusiveness, and the pick and choice of dancing activity which old family connections and associations supplied. The country was very different; there, young men were always in request, and were taken with much lighter credentials.
If, thought she, sweet William could but manage to establish a good country connection, there was no saying but he might retain it in town; at all events, the experiment would separate him from the artful Butter Fingers, and pave the way for her dismissal.
To accomplish this desirable object, Mrs. Pringle therefore devoted her undivided attention.
CHAPTER VII.
THE EARL OF LADYTHORNE.—MISS DE GLANCEY.
AMONG Mrs. Pringle’s many visitors was that gallant old philanthropist, the well-known Earl of Ladythorne, of Tantivy Castle, Featherbedfordshire and Belvedere House, London.
His lordship had known her at Lady Delacey’s, and Mrs. Pringle still wore and prized a ruby ring he slipped upon her finger as he met her (accidentally of course) in the passage early one morning as he was going to hunt. His saddle-horses might often be seen of a summer afternoon, tossing their heads up and down Curtain Crescent, to the amusement of the inhabitants of that locality. His lordship indeed was a well-known general patron of all that was fair and fine and handsome in creation, fine women, fine houses, fine horses, fine hounds, fine pictures, fine statues, fine every thing. No pretty woman either in town or country ever wanted a friend if he was aware of it.
He had long hunted Featherbedfordshire in a style of great magnificence, and though latterly his energies had perhaps been as much devoted to the pursuit of the fair as the fox, yet, as he found the two worked well together, he kept up the hunting establishment with all the splendour of his youth. Not that he was old: as he would say, “far from it!” Indeed, to walk behind him down St. James’s Street (he does not go quite so well up), his easy jaunty air, tall graceful figure, and elasticity of step, might make him pass for a man in that most uncertain period of existence the “prime of life,” and if uncivil, unfriendly, inexorable time has whitened his pow, his lordship carries it off with the aid of gay costume and colour. He had a great reputation among the ladies, and though they all laughed and shook their heads when his name was mentioned, from the pretty simpering Mrs. Ringdove, of Lime-Tree Grove, who said he was a “naughty man,” down to the buxom chambermaid of the Rose and Crown, who giggled and called him a “gay old gentleman,” they all felt pleased and flattered by his attentions.
Hunting a country undoubtedly gives gay old gentlemen great opportunities, for, under pretence of finding a fox, they may rummage any where from the garret[1] to the cellar.
[1] Ex. gra., As we say in the classics. “A Fox Run into a Lady’s Dressing-Room.—The Heythrop hounds met at Ranger’s Lodge, within about a mile of Charlbury, found in Hazell Wood, and went away through Great Cranwell, crossing the park of Cornbury, on by the old kennel to Live Oak, taking the side hill, leaving Leafield (so celebrated for clay-pipes) to his left, crossed the bottom by Five Ashes; then turned to the right, through King’s Wood. Smallstones, Knighton Copse, over the plain to Ranger’s Lodge, with the hounds close at his brush, where they left him in a mysterious manner. After the lapse of a little time he was discovered by a maid- servant in the ladies’ dressing-room, from which he immediately bolted on the appearance of the petticoats, without doing the slightest damage to person or property."—Bell’s Life. What a gentlemanly fox!
In this interesting pursuit, his lordship was ably assisted by his huntsman, Dicky Boggledike. Better huntsman there might be than Dicky, but none so eminently qualified for the double pursuit of the fox and the fine. He had a great deal of tact and manner, and looked and was essentially a nobleman’s servant. He didn’t come blurting open-mouthed with “I’ve seen a davilish,” for such was his dialect, “I’ve seen a davilish fine oss, my lord,” or “They say Mrs. Candle’s cow has gained another prize,” but he would take an opportunity of introducing the subject neatly and delicately, through the medium of some allusion to the country in which they were to be found, some cover wanting cutting, some poacher wanting trouncing, or some puppy out at walk, so that if his lordship didn’t seem to come into the humour of the thing, Dicky could