第26章

Well, Mr.Brough pitied the poor love-sick swain, as he called me, so much, and felt such a warm sympathy in my well-being, that he insisted on my going down to Somersetshire with a couple of months' leave; and away I went, as happy as a lark, with a couple of brand- new suits from Von Stiltz's in my trunk (I had them made, looking forward to a certain event), and inside the trunk Lieutenant Smith's fleecy hosiery; wrapping up a parcel of our prospectuses and two letters from John Brough, Esq., tomy mother our worthy annuitant, and to Mrs.Hoggarty our excellent shareholder.Mr.Brough said I was all that the fondest father could wish, that he considered me as his own boy, and that he earnestly begged Mrs.Hoggarty not to delay the sale of her little landed property, as land was high now and MUST FALL; whereas the West Diddlesex Association shares were (comparatively) low, and must inevitably, in the course of a year or two, double, treble, quadruple their present value.

In this way I was prepared, and in this way I took leave of my dear Gus.As we parted in the yard of the "Bolt-in-Tun," Fleet Street, I felt that I never should go back to Salisbury Square again, and had made my little present to the landlady's family accordingly.She said I was the respectablest gentleman she had ever had in her house: nor was that saying much, for Bell Lane is in the Rules of the Fleet, and her lodgers used commonly to be prisoners on Rule from that place.As for Gus, the poor fellow cried and blubbered so that he could not eat a morsel of the muffins and grilled ham with which I treated him for breakfast in the "Bolt-in-Tun" coffee- house; and when I went away was waving his hat and his handkerchief so in the archway of the coach-office that I do believe the wheels of the "True Blue" went over his toes, for I heard him roaring as we passed through the arch.Ah! how different were my feelings as I sat proudly there on the box by the side of Jim Ward, the coachman, to those I had the last time I mounted that coach, parting from my dear Mary and coming to London with my DIAMOND PIN!

When arrived near home (at Grumpley, three miles from our village, where the "True Blue" generally stops to take a glass of ale at the Poppleton Arms) it was as if our Member, Mr.Poppleton himself, was come into the country, so great was the concourse of people assembled round the inn.And there was the landlord of the inn and all the people of the village.Then there was Tom Wheeler, the post-boy, from Mrs.Rincer's posting-hotel in our town; he was riding on the old bay posters, and they, Heaven bless us! were drawing my aunt's yellow chariot, in which she never went out but thrice in a year, and in which she now sat in her splendid cashmere shawl and a new hat and feather.She waved a white handkerchief out of the window, and Tom Wheeler shouted out"Huzza!" as did a number of the little blackguard boys of Grumpley: who, to be sure, would huzza for anything.What a change on Tom Wheeler's part, however! I remembered only a few years before how he had whipped me from the box of the chaise, as I was hanging on for a ride behind.Next to my aunt's carriage came the four-wheeled chaise of Lieutenant Smith, R.N., who was driving his old fat pony with his lady by his side.I looked in the back seat of the chaise, and felt a little sad at seeing that SOMEBODY was not there.But, O silly fellow! there was Somebody in the yellow chariot with my aunt, blushing like a peony, I declare, and looking so happy!--oh, so happy and pretty! She had a white dress, and a light blue and yellow scarf, which my aunt said were the Hoggarty colours; though what the Hoggartys had to do with light blue and yellow, I don't know to this day.

Well, the "True Blue" guard made a great bellowing on his horn as his four horses dashed away; the boys shouted again; I was placed bodkin between Mrs.Hoggarty and Mary; Tom Wheeler cut into his bays; the Lieutenant (who had shaken me cordially by the hand, and whose big dog did not make the slightest attempt at biting me this time) beat his pony till its fat sides lathered again; and thus in this, I may say, unexampled procession, I arrived in triumph at our village.