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But to return to the ladies, who are all this while kept waiting in the hall, and to their usual conversation after dinner. Can any man forget how miserably flat it was? "My dear Lady Dawdley, do tell me about poor Susan Tuckett." Second Lady. "All three children are perfectly well, and I assure you as fine babies as I ever saw in my life.
My conversion made some noise in the county, being emphasized as it were by this fact of the fish. I can't tell you with what pangs I kept my resolution; but keep it I did for some time. With so much beauty and wealth, Mary M'Alister had of course many suitors, and among them was the young Lord Dawdley, whose mamma has previously been described in her gown of red satin.
I am godfather to one of Lady Dawdley's boys, and hers is the only house where I am allowed to smoke unmolested; but I have never been able to admire Dawdley, a sly, sournois, spiritless, lily-livered fellow, that took his name off all his clubs the year he married. I say I learned little that was useful at Slaughter House, and nothing that was ornamental.
I believe she was right, though I have never to this day been able to pardon the scoundrelly stratagem by which Dawdley robbed me of a wife and won one himself. As I was lying on his sofa, looking at the moon and lost in a thousand happy contemplations, Lord Dawdley, returning from the tailor's, saw me smoking at my leisure. On entering his dressing-room, a horrible treacherous thought struck him.
"What's the joke, George?" said Dawdley. "Did I say anything witty?" "No," cried I, yelling still more wildly; "nothing more witty than usual." "Don't be severe, George," said he, with a mortified air; and we drove on to B House.
I always found an opera too long by two acts, and have repeatedly fallen asleep in the presence of Mary M'Alister herself, sitting at the back of the box shaded by the huge beret of her old aunt, Lady Betty Plumduff; and many a time has Dawdley, with Miss M'Alister on his arm, wakened me up at the close of the entertainment in time to offer my hand to Lady Betty, and lead the ladies to their carriage.
Dawdley always smoked in his room I had not smoked for four months and eleven days. When Lord Dawdley came into the study, he did not make any remarks; and oh, how easy my heart felt! He was dressed in his green and boots, after Westall's picture, correctly. "It's time to be off, George," said he; "they told me you were dressed long ago. Come up, my man, and get ready."
It was a fancy ball, and the poems of Scott being at that time all the fashion, Mary was to appear in the character of the "Lady of the Lake," old M'Alister making a very tall and severe-looking harper; Dawdley, a most insignificant Fitzjames; and your humble servant a stalwart manly Roderick Dhu.
The tartan cloak was outrageously hot and voluminous; it was the dog-days, and all these things I was condemned to wear in the midst of a crowd of a thousand people! Dawdley sent up word, as I was dressing, that his dress had not arrived, and he took my cab and drove off in a rage to his tailor.
"Good heavens, George!" she said, stretching her hand to me, "what makes you look so wild and pale?" I advanced, and was going to take her hand, when she dropped it with a scream. "Ah ah ah!" she said. "Mr. Fitz-Boodle, you've been smoking!" There was an immense laugh from four hundred people round about us, and the scoundrelly Dawdley joined in the yell.
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