"Ask Mamma"; or, The Richest Commoner In EnglandSurtees, Robert Smith
General
"Ask Mamma"; or, The Richest Commoner In England
Surtees, Robert Smith
England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Fox hunting -- Fiction
Bouncible, either mistaking the rank of his guests, or wanting to
have a better look at the lady, emerged from his glass-fronted
den of a bar, and salaam’d them up to the dirty coach, where the
highly-fee’d coachman stood door in hand, waiting to perform the
last act of attention for his money. In went Billy and the
beauty, or rather the beauty and Billy, bang went the door, the
outsiders scrambled up on to their perches and shelves as best
they could. “_All right! Sit tight!_” was presently heard, and
whip, jip, crack, cut, three blind ‘uns and a bolter were again
bumping the lumbering vehicle along the cobble-stoned street,
bringing no end of cherry cheeks and corkscrew ringlets to the
windows, to mark that important epoch of the day, the coach
passing by.
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_Original Size_
Billy, feeling all the better for his dinner, and inspirited by
sundry gulps of wine, proceeded to make himself comfortable, in
order to open fire as soon as ever the coach got off the stones.
He took a rapid retrospect of all the various angels he had
encountered, those who had favoured him, those who had frowned,
and he was decidedly of opinion that he had never seen anything
to compare to the fair lady before him. He was rich and thriving
and would please himself without consulting
Want-nothin’-but-what’s-right Jerry, Half-a-yard-of-the-table
Joe, or any of them. It wasn’t like as if they were to be in Co.
with him in the lady. She would never come into the balance
sheets. No; she was to be all his, and they had no business with
it. He believed Want-nothin’-but-what’s-right would be glad if he
never married. Just then the coach glid from the noisy pavement
on to the comparatively speaking silent macadamised road, and
Billy and the lady opened fire simultaneously, the lady about the
discomforts of coach-travelling, which she had never tried
before, and Billy about the smack of the Teneriffe, which he
thought very earthy. He had some capital wine at home, he said,
as everybody has. This led him to London, the street conveniences
or inconveniences as they then were of the metropolis, which
subject he plied for the purpose of finding out as well where the
lady lived as whether her carriage would meet her or not; but
this she skilfully parried, by asking Billy where he lived, and
finding it was Doughty Street, Russell Square, she observed, as
in truth it is, that it was a very airy part of the town, and
proceeded to expatiate on the beauty of the flowers in Covent
Garden, from whence she got to the theatres, then to the opera,
intimating a very considerable acquaintance as well with the
capital as with that enchanted circle, the West-end, comprising
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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