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Badger's modesty," said Mr. Jarndyce, "I would take leave to correct him and say three distinguished men." "Thank you, Mr. Jarndyce! What I always tell him!" observed Mrs. Badger. "And, my dear," said Mr. Badger, "what do I always tell you? Badger to us generally, "so unreasonable as to put my reputation on the same footing with such first-rate men as Captain Swosser and Professor Dingo.
Badger signified to us that she had never madly loved but once and that the object of that wild affection, never to be recalled in its fresh enthusiasm, was Captain Swosser. The professor was yet dying by inches in the most dismal manner, and Mrs. Badger was giving us imitations of his way of saying, with great difficulty, "Where is Laura?
It is singular that the professor was the antipodes of Captain Swosser and that Mr. Badger is not in the least like either!" We then passed into a narrative of the deaths of Captain Swosser and Professor Dingo, both of whom seem to have had very bad complaints. In the course of it, Mrs.
Badger gave us in the drawing-room a biographical sketch of the life and services of Captain Swosser before his marriage and a more minute account of him dating from the time when he fell in love with her at a ball on board the Crippler, given to the officers of that ship when she lay in Plymouth Harbour. "The dear old Crippler!" said Mrs. Badger, shaking her head. "She was a noble vessel.
Trim, ship-shape, all a taunto, as Captain Swosser used to say. You must excuse me if I occasionally introduce a nautical expression; I was quite a sailor once. Captain Swosser loved that craft for my sake. It was his naval way of mentioning my eyes." Mrs. Badger shook her head, sighed, and looked in the glass.
"My dears, though still young, I have had many opportunities of observing young men. There were many such on board the dear old Crippler, I assure you. After that, when I was with Captain Swosser in the Mediterranean, I embraced every opportunity of knowing and befriending the midshipmen under Captain Swosser's command.
Badger, "speaking in his figurative naval manner, that when you make pitch hot, you cannot make it too hot; and that if you only have to swab a plank, you should swab it as if Davy Jones were after you. It appears to me that this maxim is applicable to the medical as well as to the nautical profession. "To all professions," observed Mr. Badger. "It was admirably said by Captain Swosser.
And they found it, as people generally do, difficult to believe." "I was barely twenty," said Mrs. Badger, "when I married Captain Swosser of the Royal Navy. I was in the Mediterranean with him; I am quite a sailor. On the twelfth anniversary of my wedding-day, I became the wife of Professor Dingo." "Of European reputation," added Mr. Badger in an undertone. "And when Mr.
Jarndyce quite triumphantly, "You would hardly suppose that I am Mrs. Bayham Badger's third!" "Indeed?" said Mr. Jarndyce. "Her third!" said Mr. Badger. "Mrs. Bayham Badger has not the appearance, Miss Summerson, of a lady who has had two former husbands?" I said "Not at all!" "And most remarkable men!" said Mr. Badger in a tone of confidence. "Captain Swosser of the Royal Navy, who was Mrs.
Badger, I still pursue those habits of observation which were formed during the lifetime of Captain Swosser and adapted to new and unexpected purposes during the lifetime of Professor Dingo. I therefore have not come to the consideration of Mr. Carstone as a neophyte. And yet I am very much of the opinion, my dears, that he has not chosen his profession advisedly."
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