I'm blowed if I don't put a
pistol to my 'ead, and end it, Mrs. G. There they go in--three, four,
six, seven on 'em, and the man. That's the precious child's physic I
suppose he's a-carryin' in the basket. Just look at the luggage. I say!
There's a bloody hand on the first carriage. It's a baronet, is it? I
'ope your ladyship's very well; and I 'ope Sir John will soon be down
yere to join his family." Mr. Gawler makes sarcastic bows over the card
in his bow-window whilst making this speech. The little Gawlers rush on
to the drawing-room verandah themselves to examine the new arrivals.
"This is Mrs. Honeyman's?" asks the gentleman designated by Mr. Gawler as
"the foring cove," and hands in a card on which the words, "Miss
Honeyman, 110, Steyne Gardens. J. Goodenough," are written in that
celebrated physician's handwriting. "We want five bet-rooms, six bets,
two or dree sitting-rooms. Have you got dese?"
"Will you speak to my mistress?" says Hannah. And if it is a fact that
Miss Honeyman does happen to be in the front parlour looking at the
carriages, what harm is there in the circumstance, pray? Is not Gawler
looking, and the people next door? Are not half a dozen little boys
already gathered in the street (as if they started up out of the
trap-doors for the coals), and the nursery maids in the stunted little
garden, are not they looking through the bars of the square? "Please to
speak to mistress," says Hannah, opening the parlour-door, and with a
curtsey, "A gentleman about the apartments, mum.
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