“I say you _do_ take care of Mr. Bonnington,” Baker blandly resumes (she has hit Mrs. Bonnington on the raw place, and smilingly proceeds to thong again): “I say you _do_ take care of your husband, my dear creature, and that is why you can’t attend to Frederick! And as he is of a very easy temper,—except sometimes with his poor Cecilia’s mother,—he allows all his tradesmen to cheat him; all his servants to cheat him; Bedford to be rude to everybody; and if to me, why not to my servant Bulkeley, with whom Lord Toddleby’s groom of the chambers gave me the very highest character?” Mrs. Bonnington in a great flurry broke in by saying she was surprised to hear that noblemen _had_ grooms in their chambers: and she thought they were much better in the stables: and when they dined with Captain Huff, you know, Frederick, _his_ man always brought such a dreadful smell of the stable in with him, that——Here she paused. Baker’s eye was on her; and that dowager was grinning a cruel triumph. “He!—he! You mistake, my good Mrs. Bonnington!” says her ladyship. “Your poor mother mistakes, my dear Frederick. You have lived in a quiet and most respectable sphere, but not, you understand, not——” “Not what, pray, Lady Baker? We have lived in this neighbourhood twenty years: in my late husband’s time, when _we saw a great deal of company_, and this dear Frederick was a boy at Westminster School. And we have _paid_ for everything we have had for twenty years; and we have not owed a penny to any _tradesman_. And we may not have had _powdered footmen_, six feet high, impertinent beasts, who were rude to all the maids in the place. Don’t—I _will_ speak, Frederick! But servants who loved us, and who were _paid their wages_, and who—o—ho—ho—ho!” Wipe your eyes, dear friends! out with all your pocket-handkerchiefs. I protest I cannot bear to see a woman in distress. Of course Fred Lovel runs to console his dear old mother, and vows Lady Baker meant no harm. “Meant harm! My dear Frederick, what harm can I mean? I only said your poor mother did not seem to know what a groom of the chambers was! How should she?” “Come—come,” says Frederick, “enough of this! Miss Prior, will you be so kind as to give us a little music?” Miss Prior was playing Beethoven at the piano, very solemnly and finely, when our Black Sheep returned to this quiet fold, and, I am sorry to say, in a very riotous condition. The brilliancy of his eye, the purple flush on his nose, the unsteady gait, and uncertain tone of voice, told tales of Captain Clarence, who stumbled over more than one chair before he found a seat near me. “Quite right, old boy,” says he, winking at me. “Cut again—dooshid good fellosh. Better than being along with you shtoopid-old-fogish.” And he began to warble wild “Fol-de-rol-lolls” in an insane accompaniment to the music. “By heavens, this is too bad!” growls Lovel. “Lady Baker, let your big man carry your son to bed. Thank you, Miss Prior!”