“Hold your blaspheming tongues of ye! Botany Bay, indeed! They’d never send the likes of her ladyship to prison for one minute, no matter what she was left to her own devises to do, let alone Botany Bay. Is her blessed ladyship, Tom Sawyers, ye brutes? Shame on ye! And she the sweetest angel as ever went without wings. Shame on ye! And she educating all yer children, and clothing all yer old mothers, and lifting half the burden of life from your good-for-naught shoulders ever since she came home these ten years back—shame on ye! I say again, ye great, stupid, unfeeling brute beasts! to take her sweet name on yer lips!” exclaimed the little landlady, unable longer to repress her indignation at hearing her “angel’s” calamity thus freely discussed, and therefore quite ready to sacrifice her interests to her feelings, and offend every guest in her kitchen. “Coom, coom, Mother Higgins, dooant thee get hoigh with us. Give us zoome more ale,” replied the baker, holding his pewter pot up for replenishment. “Well, then, keep a civil tongue in yer heads, and know who ye’d be talking about, ye stupid loons, ye! That French frog-eater as the Evil One has sot on to pretend to her dear ladyship, has no more right to lift his eye to _her_ than old Bony has to the crown of England.” Speaking of “Bony” probably suggested battle, for the honest woman went on to say, “And more betoken, they do tell me how the Frenchman stole her from a boarding-school while she was a child; and if so be he should get her _now_, it would cause a war with France.” “Chut, dame; wot do thee knoa aboot politics and war? and whoy should ’s majesty go to war aboot two yoong uns as doant know their own moinds? Speak wot thee knows on, dame,” said Tom Stallins. “Oy, but the dame be roight! Master Stubbins, his ludship’s oon mon, says how his ludship, Lud Muntresser, do stick to it as the Frenchman had noo roight to coome here giving trooble; and his ludship wull stand by the lady, een noo that her oon fayther and moother hev cast un off, and more zhame for um,” said Mr. Stiggins. “Ay will he, I’ll warrant ye! And a right noble gentleman he is,” exclaimed the landlady. “Zo he is! zo he is! and here’s to Lud Muntrussor!” agreed the baker, tossing off the foaming bumper just placed in his hand by the dame. And similar discussions to this were taking place in every ale-house, tap-room, and tavern-kitchen in the three counties, as far as the news had flown. * * * * * The morning after the preliminary examination, the elegant boudoir of Lady Bannerman was half-filled with morning callers, who had “just happened in” to hear a true, authentic report from first quarters of this most wonderful of scandals. Ladies whose charms had long been thrown in the shade by the peerless beauty and genius of Estelle Morelle, now canvassed without mercy her sudden fall.