CHAPTER III.

HOW ENSIGN BRADY ASTONISHED THE NATIVES AT MISS THEODOSIA MACNAMARA'S.

"I thought this was an uncommonly pathetic wish, after the manner of the Persian poet Hafiz, but it was scarcely out of my mouth, when Ensign Brady, taking a cup of tea from Miss Dosy's hand, looking upon me with an air of infinite condescension, declared that I must be the happiest of men, as my wish was granted before it was made. I was preparing to answer, but Miss Dosy laughed so loud that I had not time, and my only resource was to swallow what I had just made. The ensign followed up his victory without mercy.

"'Talking of potatoes, Miss Theodosia,' said he, looking at me, 'puts me in mind of truffles. Do you know this most exquisite cake of yours much resembles a _gateau aux truffes_? By Gad! how Colonel Thornton, Sir Harry Millicent, Lord Mortgageshire, and that desperate fellow, the Honourable and Reverend Dick Sellenger, and I, used to tuck in truffles when we were quartered in Paris. Mortgageshire--an uncommon droll fellow; I used to call his Lordship Morty--he called me Brad--we were on such terms; and we used to live together in the Rue de la Paix, that beautiful street close by the Place Vendome, where there's the pillar. You have been at Paris, Miss Macnamara?' asked the ensign, filling his mouth with a half-pound bite of the potato-cake at the same moment.

"Dosy confessed that she had never travelled into any foreign parts except the kingdom of Kerry; and on the same question being repeated to me, I was obliged to admit that I was in a similar predicament. Brady was triumphant.

"'It is a loss to any man,' said he, 'not to have been in Paris. I know that city well, and so I ought; but I did many naughty things there.'

"'O fie!' said Mrs Macnamara.

"'O, madam,' continued Brady, 'the fact is, that the Paris ladies were rather too fond of us English. When I say English, I mean Scotch and Irish as well; but, nevertheless, I think Irishmen had more good-luck than the natives of the other two islands.'

"'In my geography book,' said Miss Dosy, 'it is put down only as one island, consisting of England, capital London, on the Thames, in the south; and Scotland, capital Edinburgh, on the Forth, in the north; population'----

"'Gad! you are right,' said Brady--'perfectly right, Miss Macnamara. I see you are quite a blue. But, as I was saying, it is scarce possible for a good-looking young English officer to escape the French ladies. And then I played rather deep--on the whole, however, I think, I may say I won. Mortgageshire and I broke Frascati's one night--we won a hundred thousand francs at rouge, and fifty-four thousand at roulette. You would have thought the croupiers would have fainted; they tore their hair with vexation. The money, however, soon went again--we could not keep it. As for wine, you have it cheap there, and of a quality which you cannot get in England. At Very's, for example, I drank chambertin--it is a kind of claret--for three francs two sous a-bottle, which was, beyond all comparison, far superior to what I drank, a couple of months ago, at the Duke of Devonshire's, though his Grace prides himself on that very wine, and sent to a particular binn for a favourite specimen, when I observed to him I had tasted better in Paris. Out of politeness, I pretended to approve of his Grace's choice; but I give you my honour--only I would not wish it to reach his Grace's ears--it was not to be compared to what I had at Very's for a moment.'

"So flowed on Brady for a couple of hours. The Tooleries, as he thought proper to call them; the Louvre, with its pictures, the removal of which he deplored as a matter of taste, assuring us that he had used all his influence with the Emperor of Russia and the Duke of Wellington to prevent it, but in vain; the Boulevards, the opera, the theatres, the Champs Elysees, the Montagnes Russes--everything, in short, about Paris, was depicted to the astonished mind of Miss Dosy. Then came London--where he belonged to I do not know how many clubs--and cut a most distinguished figure in the fashionable world. He was of the Prince Regent's set, and assured us, on his honour, that there was never anything so ill-founded as the stories afloat to the discredit of that illustrious person. But on what happened at Carlton House, he felt obliged to keep silence, the Prince being remarkably strict in exacting a premise from every gentleman whom he admitted to his table, not to divulge anything that occurred there--a violation of which promise was the cause of the exclusion of Brummell. As for the Princess of Wales, he would rather not say anything.

"And so forth. Now, in those days of my innocence, I believed these stories as gospel, hating the fellow all the while from the bottom of my heart, as I saw that he made a deep impression on Dosy, who sat in open-mouthed wonder, swallowing them down as a common-councilman swallows turtle. But times are changed. I have seen Paris and London since, and I believe I know both villages as well as most men, and the deuce a word of truth did Brady tell in his whole narrative. In Paris, when not in quarters (he had joined some six or eight months after Waterloo), he lived _au cinquantieme_ in a dog-hole in the Rue Git-le-Coeur (a street at what I may call the Surrey side of Paris), among carters and other such folk; and in London I discovered that his principal domicile was in one of the courts now demolished to make room for the fine new gimcrackery at Charing Cross; it was in Round Court, at a pieman's of the name of Dudfield."

"Dick Dudfield?" said Jack Ginger; "I knew the man well--a most particular friend of mine. He was a duffer besides being a pieman, and was transported some years ago. He is now a flourishing merchant in Australasia, and will, I suppose, in due time be grandfather to a member of Congress."

"There it was that Brady lived then," continued Bob Burke, "when he was hobnobbing with Georgius Quartus, and dancing at Almack's with Lady Elizabeth Conynghame. Faith, the nearest approach he ever made to royalty was when he was put into the King's own Bench, where he sojourned many a long day. What an ass I was to believe a word of such stuff! but, nevertheless, it goes down with the rustics to the present minute. I sometimes sport a duke or so myself, when I find myself among yokels, and I rise vastly in estimation by so doing. What do we come to London or Paris for, but to get some touch of knowing how to do things properly? It would be devilish hard, I think, for Ensign Brady, or Ensign Brady's master, to do me nowadays by flamming off titles of high life."

The company did no more than justice to Mr Burke's experience, by unanimously admitting that such a feat was all but impossible.

"I was," he went on, "a good deal annoyed at my inferiority, and I could not help seeing that Miss Dosy was making comparisons that were rather odious, as she glanced from the gay uniform of the Ensign on my habiliments, which having been perpetrated by a Mallow tailor with a hatchet, or pitchfork, or pickaxe, or some such tool, did not stand the scrutiny to advantage. I was, I think, a better-looking fellow than Brady. Well, well--laugh if you like. I am no beauty, I know; but then, consider that what I am talking of was sixteen years ago, and more; and a man does not stand the battering I have gone through for these sixteen years with impunity. Do you call the thirty or forty thousand tumblers of punch, in all its varieties, that I have since imbibed, nothing?"

"Yes," said Jack Ginger, with a sigh, "there was a song we used to sing on board the Brimstone, when cruising about the Spanish main--

"'If Mars leaves his scars, jolly Bacchus as well Sets his trace on the face, which a toper will tell; But which a more merry campaign has pursued, The shedder of wine, or the shedder of blood?'

"I forget the rest of it. Poor Ned Nixon! It was he who made that song--he was afterwards bit in two by a shark, having tumbled overboard in the cool of the evening, one fine summer day, off Port Royal."

"Well, at all events," said Burke, continuing his narrative, "I thought I was a better-looking fellow than my rival, and was fretted at being sung down. I resolved to outstay him--and though he sate long enough, I, who was more at home, contrived to remain after him, but it was only to hear him extolled.

"'A very nice young man,' said Mrs Macnamara.

"'An extreme nice young man,' responded Miss Theodosia.

"'A perfect gentleman in his manners; he puts me quite in mind of my uncle, the late Jerry O'Regan,' observed Mrs Macnamara.

"'Quite the gentleman in every particular,' ejaculated Miss Theodosia.

"'He has seen a great deal of the world for so young a man,' remarked Mrs Macnamara.

"'He has mixed in the best society, too,' cried Miss Theodosia.

"'It is a great advantage to a young man to travel,' quoth Mrs Macnamara.

"'And a very great disadvantage to a young man to be always sticking at home,' chimed in Miss Theodosia, looking at me; 'it shuts them out from all chances of the elegance which we have just seen displayed by Ensign Brady of the 48th Foot.'

"'For my part,' said I, 'I do not think him such an elegant fellow at all. Do you remember, Dosy Macnamara, how he looked when he got up out of the green puddle to-day?'

"'Mr Burke,' said she, 'that was an accident that might happen any man. You were thrown yourself this day week, on clearing Jack Falvey's wall--so you need not reflect on Mr Brady.'

"'If I was,' said I, 'it was as fine a leap as ever was made; and I was on my mare in half a shake afterwards. Bob Buller of Ballythomas, or Jack Prendergast, or Fergus O'Connor, could not have it rode it better. And you too'----

"'Well,' said she, 'I am not going to dispute with you. I am sleepy, and must get to bed.'

"'Do, poor chicken,' said Mrs Macnamara, soothingly, 'and, Bob, my dear, I wish it was in your power to go travel, and see the Booleries and the Tooleyvards, and the rest, and then you might be, in course of time, as genteel as Ensign Brady.'

"'Heigho!' said Miss Dosy, ejecting a sigh. 'Travel, Bob, travel.'

"'I will,' said I, at once, and left the house in the most abrupt manner, after consigning Ensign Brady to the particular attention of Tisiphone, Alecto, and Megaera, all compressed into one emphatic monosyllable.