Mrs. Maplesone was an enterprising widow of about fifty: shrewd, scheming, and good-looking. She was amiably anxious on behalf of her daughters; in proof whereof she used to remark, that she would have no objection to marry again, if it would benefit her dear girls—she could have no other motive. The ‘dear girls’ themselves were not at all insensible to the merits of ‘a good establishment.’ One of them was twenty-five; the other, three years younger. They had been at different watering-places, for four seasons; they had gambled at libraries, read books in balconies, sold at fancy fairs, danced at assemblies, talked sentiment—in short, they had done all that industrious girls could do—but, as yet, to no purpose.
‘What a magnificent dresser Mr. Simpson is!’ whispered Matilda Maplesone to her sister Julia.
‘Splendid!’ returned the youngest. The magnificent individual alluded to wore a maroon-coloured dress-coat, with a velvet collar and cuffs of the same tint—very like that which usually invests the form of the distinguished unknown who condescends to play the ‘swell’ in the pantomime at ‘Richardson’s Show.’
‘What whiskers!’ said Miss Julia.
‘Charming!’ responded her sister; ‘and what hair!’ His hair was like a wig, and distinguished by that insinuating wave which graces the shining locks of those chef-d’oeuvres of art surmounting the waxen images in Bartellot’s window in Regent-street; his whiskers meeting beneath his chin, seemed strings wherewith to tie it on, ere science had rendered them unnecessary by her patent invisible springs.
‘Dinner’s on the table, ma’am, if you please,’ said the boy, who now appeared for the first time, in a revived black coat of his master’s.
‘Oh! Mr. Calton, will you lead Mrs. Maplesone?—Thank you.’ Mr. Simpson offered his arm to Miss Julia; Mr. Septimus Hicks escorted the lovely Matilda; and the procession proceeded to the dining-room. Mr. Tibbs was introduced, and Mr. Tibbs bobbed up and down to the three ladies like a figure in a Dutch clock, with a powerful spring in the middle of his body, and then dived rapidly into his seat at the bottom of the table, delighted to screen himself behind a soup-tureen, which he could just see over, and that was all. The boarders were seated, a lady and gentleman alternately, like the layers of bread and meat in a plate of sandwiches; and then Mrs. Tibbs directed James to take off the covers. Salmon, lobster-sauce, giblet-soup, and the usual accompaniments were discovered: potatoes like petrifactions, and bits of toasted bread, the shape and size of blank dice.
‘Soup for Mrs. Maplesone, my dear,’ said the bustling Mrs. Tibbs. She always called her husband ‘my dear’ before company. Tibbs, who had been eating his bread, and calculating how long it would be before he should get any fish, helped the soup in a hurry, made a small island on the table-cloth, and put his glass upon it, to hide it from his wife.
‘Miss Julia, shall I assist you to some fish?’
‘If you please—very little—oh! plenty, thank you’ (a bit about the size of a walnut put upon the plate).
‘Julia is a very little eater,’ said Mrs. Maplesone to Mr. Calton.
The knocker gave a single rap. He was busy eating the fish with his eyes: so he only ejaculated, ‘Ah!’
‘My dear,’ said Mrs. Tibbs to her spouse after every one else had been helped, ‘what do you take?’ The inquiry was accompanied with a look intimating that he mustn’t say fish, because there was not much left. Tibbs thought the frown referred to the island on the table-cloth; he therefore coolly replied, ‘Why—I’ll take a little—fish, I think.’
‘Did you say fish, my dear?’ (another frown).
‘Yes, dear,’ replied the villain, with an expression of acute hunger depicted in his countenance. The tears almost started to Mrs. Tibbs’s eyes, as she helped her ‘wretch of a husband,’ as she inwardly called him, to the last eatable bit of salmon on the dish.
‘James, take this to your master, and take away your master’s knife.’ This was deliberate revenge, as Tibbs never could eat fish without one. He was, however, constrained to chase small particles of salmon round and round his plate with a piece of bread and a fork, the number of successful attempts being about one in seventeen.
‘Take away, James,’ said Mrs. Tibbs, as Tibbs swallowed the fourth mouthful—and away went the plates like lightning.
‘I’ll take a bit of bread, James,’ said the poor ‘master of the house,’ more hungry than ever.
‘Never mind your master now, James,’ said Mrs. Tibbs, ‘see about the meat.’ This was conveyed in the tone in which ladies usually give admonitions to servants in company, that is to say, a low one; but which, like a stage whisper, from its peculiar emphasis, is most distinctly heard by everybody present.
A pause ensued, before the table was replenished—a sort of parenthesis in which Mr. Simpson, Mr. Calton, and Mr. Hicks, produced respectively a bottle of sauterne, bucellas, and sherry, and took wine with everybody—except Tibbs. No one ever thought of him.
Between the fish and an intimated sirloin, there was a prolonged interval.
Here was an opportunity for Mr. Hicks. He could not resist the singularly appropriate quotation—
‘But beef is rare within these oxless isles;
Goats’ flesh there is, no doubt, and kid, and mutton,
And when a holiday upon them smiles,
A joint upon their barbarous spits they put on.’
‘Very ungentlemanly behaviour,’ thought little Mrs. Tibbs, ‘to talk in that way.’
‘Ah,’ said Mr. Calton, filling his glass. ‘Tom Moore is my poet.’
‘And mine,’ said Mrs. Maplesone.
‘And mine,’ said Miss Julia.
‘And mine,’ added Mr. Simpson.
‘Look at his compositions,’ resumed the knocker.
‘To be sure,’ said Simpson, with confidence.
‘Look at Don Juan,’ replied Mr. Septimus Hicks.
‘Julia’s letter,’ suggested Miss Matilda.
‘Can anything be grander than the Fire Worshippers?’ inquired Miss Julia.
‘To be sure,’ said Simpson.
‘Or Paradise and the Peri,’ said the old beau.
‘Yes; or Paradise and the Peer,’ repeated Simpson, who thought he was getting through it capitally.
‘It’s all very well,’ replied Mr. Septimus Hicks, who, as we have before hinted, never had read anything but Don Juan. ‘Where will you find anything finer than the description of the siege, at the commencement of the seventh canto?’
‘Talking of a siege,’ said Tibbs, with a mouthful of bread—‘when I was in the volunteer corps, in eighteen hundred and six, our commanding officer was Sir Charles Rampart; and one day, when we were exercising on the ground on which the London University now stands, he says, says he, Tibbs (calling me from the ranks), Tibbs—’
‘Tell your master, James,’ interrupted Mrs. Tibbs, in an awfully distinct tone, ‘tell your master if he won’t carve those fowls, to send them to me.’ The discomfited volunteer instantly set to work, and carved the fowls almost as expeditiously as his wife operated on the haunch of mutton. Whether he ever finished the story is not known but, if he did, nobody heard it.
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