The Astonishing History of Troy Town | Page 8

of his bosom.
"Emily!" he bellowed, "Em-i-ly, I say! Come down this instant."
The three Misses Buzza at the parlour window knew the tone, and shuddered: Mrs. Buzza, up-stairs, heard, trembled, and obeyed.
"Yes, darling. What is it?"
"Fill the warming-pan at once. I'm going to bed."
"To bed, love!"
"Yes, to bed. Don't I speak plainly enough? To bed, ma'am, to bed, and at once."
"You are upset, dearest; be cool, I implore you."
"Be cool! Be coo'--Don't hector me, ma'am, but fetch that warming-pan at once. I'll teach you about being cool! Sophy, pull off my boots."
They obeyed. The warming-pan was brought--an enormous engine, big enough to hold the Admiral himself--and the bed heated. The Admiral undressed, and, himself a warming-pan of rage, plunged between the sheets. It was a wonder the bed-clothes were not on fire.
"Pull down the blind, and bring me something to eat!"
"Yes, love."
"And be quick about it. Can't you see I'm starving?"
It is true that the Admiral's excitement had interfered with his breakfast that morning, but it was none the less difficult to read starvation upon his face. Mrs. Buzza obeyed, however; and presently returned with the liver-wing of a fowl.
"You call that a dinner for a hungry man, I suppose! Bring me some more!"
"My dear, I didn't know you wanted a dinner."
"Confound it, ma'am! must I put dress-studs in my night-shirt to convince you I want to dine? Bring me some more!"
"There is no more fowl, dear. I kept this from yesterday's as a tit-bit for you."
"What is for dinner to-day?"
"Boiled beef: but you said expressly that dinner was to be late to-day, in consequence of the arrivals, and it is not nearly done yet."
"I don't care, bring it!"
The mention of the arrivals sent the Admiral up to a white heat again.
"But, my--"
"Bring it!"
It was brought. The Admiral had two helpings, and then a glass of grog.
"Go."
Mrs. Buzza withdrew. Left to himself, the Admiral tossed, and turned, and fumed, and swore, lay still for a while, and then repeated the process backwards. After a time the bed-clothes began to prick him, and the heat to become a positive torture. He leapt out, and tore at the bell-rope, until it came away in his hand--just as his wife reappeared.
"Will you kindly inform me what the devil's wrong with this bed? Who made it?"
"Selina, dear."
"Then will you kindly give Selina a month's notice on the spot? Do you hear? On the spot--What's that?"
The Admiral rushed to the window and pulled up the blind. He was just in time to see a close carriage and pair dash past and pull up at "The Bower."
A moment afterwards, Miss Limpenny, from the first-storey window of No. 1, saw the carriage door open, and a tall gentleman emerge. The tall gentleman was followed by a lady, whom even at that distance Miss Limpenny could see to possess a remarkably graceful figure. A small youth in livery sprang down from beside the coachman and helped to lower the boxes, whilst the new arrivals passed into the house where the charwoman, Mrs. Snell, stood smearing her face with her apron, and ducking in frenzied welcome.
The Honourable Frederic Augustus Hythe Goodwyn-Sandys and his wife, instead of arriving by train, had posted from Five-Lanes Junction.
There was no public demonstration. They might as well have come in the dead of night. Miss Limpenny was almost the sole witness of their arrival, and Miss Limpenny's observations were cut short by a terrible occurrence.
She had taken stock of the Honourable Frederic, and pronounced him "aristocratic-looking"; of the Honourable Mrs. Frederic's travelling-dress, and decided it to be Cumeelfo; she had counted the boxes twice, and made them seven each time; she was about to count the buttons on the liveried youth, when--
To this day she sinks her voice as she narrates it. She saw--the unseemliness, the monstrous indelicacy of it!--she saw--the nightcap and shoulders of Admiral Buzza craning out of the next-door window!
What happened next? Whether she actually fainted, or merely kept her eyes shut, she cannot clearly remember. But for weeks afterwards, as she declares, the sight of a man caused her to "turn all colours."
It was significant, this nightcap of Admiral Buzza--as the ram's horn to Jericho, the Mother Carey's chicken to the doomed ship. It announced, even as it struck, the first blow at the old morality of Troy.
CHAPTER IV.
OF CERTAIN LEPERS; AND TWO BROTHERS, WHO, BEING MUCH ALIKE, LOVED THEIR SISTER, AND RECOMMENDED THE USE OF GLOBES.
I must here clear myself on a point which has no doubt caused the reader some indignation. "We remarked," he or she will say, "that, some chapters back, the Admiral described Troy as a 'beautiful little town.' Why, then, have we had no description of it, no digressions on scenery, no word-painting?"
To this I answer--Dear sir, or madam, no one who has known Troy was