Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
Then pulling down the window-blind, and looking that the door was
locked, and blushing still more deeply than ever, the tailor seated
himself in an arm-chair towards which Mr. Eglantine beckoned him, and,
taking off his black wig, exposed his head to the great perruquier's
gaze. Mr. Eglantine looked at it, measured it, manipulated it, sat
for three minutes with his head in his hand and his elbow on his knee,
gazing at the tailor's cranium with all his might, walked round it twice
or thrice, and then said, “It's enough, Mr. Woolsey. Consider the job
as done. And now, sir,” said he, with a greatly relieved air--“and now,
Woolsey, let us 'ave a glass of curacoa to celebrate this hauspicious
meeting.”
The tailor, however, stiffly replied that he never drank in a morning,
and left the room without offering to shake Mr. Eglantine by the hand:
for he despised that gentleman very heartily, and himself, too, for
coming to any compromise with him, and for so far demeaning himself as
to make a coat for a barber.
Looking from his chambers on the other side of the street, that
inevitable Mr. Walker saw the tailor issuing from the perfumer's shop,
and was at no loss to guess that something extraordinary must be in
progress when two such bitter enemies met together.
CHAPTER III. WHAT CAME OF MR WALKER'S DISCOVERY OF THE “BOOTJACK.”
It is very easy to state how the Captain came to take up that proud
position at the “Bootjack” which we have seen him occupy on the evening
when the sound of the fatal “Brava!” so astonished Mr. Eglantine.
The mere entry into the establishment was, of course, not difficult. Any
person by simply uttering the words “A pint of beer,” was free of the
“Bootjack;” and it was some such watchword that Howard Walker employed
when he made his first appearance. He requested to be shown into a
parlour, where he might repose himself for a while, and was ushered into
that very sanctum where the “Kidney Club” met. Then he stated that the
beer was the best he had ever tasted, except in Bavaria, and in some
parts of Spain, he added; and professing to be extremely “peckish,”
requested to know if there were any cold meat in the house whereof he
could make a dinner.
“I don't usually dine at this hour, landlord,” said he, flinging down
a half-sovereign for payment of the beer; “but your parlour looks so
comfortable, and the Windsor chairs are so snug, that I'm sure I could
not dine better at the first club in London.”
“ONE of the first clubs in London is held in this very room,” said Mr.
Crump, very well pleased; “and attended by some of the best gents in
town, too. We call it the 'Kidney Club'.”
“Why, bless my soul! it is the very club my friend Eglantine has so
often talked to me about, and attended by some of the tip-top tradesmen
of the metropolis!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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