Chapter LXIII: A Startling Announcement

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HE proverbial serenity of Poodles was disturbed one dull winter
afternoon by our old friend General Binks banging down the
newly-arrived evening paper with a vehemence rarely witnessed in
that quiet quarter. Mr. Dorfold, who was dosing as usual with
outstretched leg’s before the fire, started up, thinking the
General was dying. Major Mustard’s hat dropped off, Mr. Proser
let fall the “Times Supplement,” Mr. Crowsfoot ceased conning the
“Post..” Alemomh, the footman, stood aghast, and altogether there
was a general cessation of every thing—Beedles was paralyzed.

The General quickly followed up the blow with a tremendous oath,
and seizing Colonel Callender’s old beaver hat instead of his own
new silk one, flung frantically out of the room, through the
passage and into St. James’s Street, as if bent on immediate
destruction.

All was amazement! What’s happened the General? Something must
have gone wrong with the General! The General—the calmest, the
quietest, the most, placid man in the world—suddenly convulsed
with such a violent paroxysm. He who had neither chick nor child,
nor anything to care about, with the certainty of an Earldom,
what _could_ have come over him?

“I’ll tell you,” exclaimed Mr. Bullion who had just dropped in on
his way from the City: “I’ll tell you,” repeated he. taking up
the paper which the General had thrown down. “_His bank’s
failed!_ Heard some qweerish hints as I came down Cornhill:” and
forthwith! Bullion turned to the City article, and ran his
accustomed eye down its contents.

“Funds opened heavily. Foreign stocks quiet. About £20,000 in bar
gold. The John Brown arrived from China. Departure of the
Peninsular Mail postponed,” and so on; but neither failures, nor
rumours of failures, either of bankers or others, were there.

Very odd—what could it be, then? must be something in the paper.
And again the members resolved themselves into a committee of the
whole house to ascertain what it was.

The first place that a lady would look to for the solution of a
mystery of this sort, is, we believe, about the last place that a
man would look to, namely, the births, deaths, and marriages; and
it was not until the sensation had somewhat subsided, and Tommy
White was talking of beating up the General’s quarter in Bury
Street, to hear what it was, that his inseparable—that “nasty
covetous body Cuddy Flintoff,” who had been plodding very
perseveringly on the line, at length hit off what astonished him
as much as we have no doubt it will the reader, being neither
more nor less than the following very quiet announcement at the
end of the list of marriages:—

“This morning, at St. Barnabas, by the Rev. Dr. Duff, the Right
Hon. The Earl of Ladythorne, to Emma, widow of the late Wm,
Pringle, Esq.”

The Earl of Ladythorne married to Mrs. Pringle! Well done our
fair friend of the frontispiece! The pure white camellias are
succeeded by a coronet! The borrowed velvet dress replaced by
anything she likes to own. Who would have thought it!

But wonders will never cease; for on this eventful day Mr. George
Gallon was seen driving the Countess’s old coach companion, Mrs.
Margerum, from Cockthorpe Church, with long white rosettes flying
at Tippy Tom’s head, and installing her mistress of the Rose and
Crown, at the cross roads; thus showing that truth is stranger
than fiction. “George,” we may add, has now taken the Flying
Childers Inn at Eversley Green, where he purposes extending his
“Torf” operations, and we make no doubt will be heard of
hereafter.

Of our other fair friends we must say a few parting words on
taking a reluctant farewell.

Though Miss Clara, now Lady Mainchance, is not quite so good a
housekeeper as Sir Moses could have wished, she is nevertheless
extremely ornamental at the head of his table; and though she has
perhaps rather exceeded with Gillow, the Major promises to make
it all right by his superior management of the property. Mr.
Mordecai Nathan has been supplanted by our master of “haryers,”
who has taken a drainage loan, and promises to set the
water-works playing at Pangburn Park, just as he did at Yammerton
Grange. He means to have a day a week there with his “haryers,”
which, he says, is the best way of seeing a country.

Miss de Glancey has revised Barley Hill Hall, for which place his
Highness now appears in Burke’s “Landed Gentry,” very
considerably; and though she has not been to Gillow, she has got
the plate out of the drawing-room, and made things very smart.
She keeps John in excellent order, and rides his grey horse
admirably. Blurkins says “the grey mare is the better horse,” but
that is no business of ours.

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Of all the brides, perhaps, Miss Flora got the best set down; for
the Woolpack’s house was capitally furnished, and he is far
happier driving his pretty wife about the country with a pair of
pyebald ponies, making calls, than in risking his neck across
country with hounds—or rather after them.

Of all our beauties, and thanks to Leech we have dealt in nothing
else, Miss Harriet alone remains unsettled with her two strings
to her bow—fine Billy and Rowley Abingdon; though which is to be
the happy man remains to be seen.

We confess we incline to think that the Countess will be too many
for the Yammertons; but if she is, there is no great harm done;
for Harriet is very young, and the Owl is a safe card in the
country where men are more faithful than they are in the towns.
Indeed, fine Billy is almost too young to know his own mind, and
marrying now would only perhaps involve the old difficulty
hereafter of father and son wanting top boots at the same time,
supposing our friend to accomplish the difficult art of sitting
at the Jumps.

So let us leave our hero open. And as we have only aimed at
nothing but the natural throughout, we will finish by proposing a
toast that will include as well the mated and the single of our
story, as the mated and the single all the world over, namely,
the old and popular one of “The single married, and the married
happy!” drunk with three times three and one cheer more! HOO-RAY!

THE END.