“Tom,” said his friend, as they turned into the noisy street, “I have a proposition to make. It is, that you and your sister—if she will so far honour a poor bachelor’s dwelling—give me a great pleasure, and come and dine with me.”
“What, today?” cried Tom.
“Yes, today. It’s close by, you know. Pray, Miss Pinch, insist upon it. It will be very disinterested, for I have nothing to give you.”
“Oh! you must not believe that, Ruth,” said Tom. “He is the most tremendous fellow, in his housekeeping, that I ever heard of, for a single man. He ought to be Lord Mayor. Well! what do you say? Shall we go?”
“If you please, Tom,” rejoined his dutiful little sister.
“But I mean,” said Tom, regarding her with smiling admiration; “is there anything you ought to wear, and haven’t got? I am sure I don’t know, John; she may not be able to take her bonnet off, for anything I can tell.”
There was a great deal of laughing at this, and there were divers compliments from John Westlock—not compliments he said at least (and really he was right), but good, plain, honest truths, which no one could deny. Ruth laughed, and all that, but she made no objection; so it was an engagement.
“If I had known it a little sooner,” said John, “I would have tried another pudding. Not in rivalry; but merely to exalt that famous one. I wouldn’t on any account have had it made with suet.”
“Why not?” asked Tom.
“Because that cookery-book advises suet,” said John Westlock; “and ours was made with flour and eggs.”
“Oh good gracious!” cried Tom. “Ours was made with flour and eggs, was it? Ha, ha, ha! A beefsteak pudding made with flour and eggs! Why anybody knows better than that. I know better than that! Ha, ha, ha!”
It is unnecessary to say that Tom had been present at the making of the pudding, and had been a devoted believer in it all through. But he was so delighted to have this joke against his busy little sister and was tickled to that degree at having found her out, that he stopped in Temple Bar to laugh; and it was no more to Tom, that he was anathematized and knocked about by the surly passengers, than it would have been to a post; for he continued to exclaim with unabated good humour, “flour and eggs! A beefsteak pudding made with flour and eggs!” until John Westlock and his sister fairly ran away from him, and left him to have his laugh out by himself; which he had, and then came dodging across the crowded street to them, with such sweet temper and tenderness (it was quite a tender joke of Tom’s) beaming in his face, God bless it, that it might have purified the air, though Temple Bar had been, as in the golden days gone by, embellished with a row of rotting human heads.
There are snug chambers in those Inns where the bachelors live, and, for the desolate fellows they pretend to be, it is quite surprising how well they get on. John was very pathetic on the subject of his dreary life, and the deplorable makeshifts and apologetic contrivances it involved, but he really seemed to make himself pretty comfortable. His rooms were the perfection of neatness and convenience at any rate; and if he were anything but comfortable, the fault was certainly not theirs.
He had no sooner ushered Tom and his sister into his best room (where there was a beautiful little vase of fresh flowers on the table, all ready for Ruth.—Just as if he had expected her, Tom said), than, seizing his hat, he bustled out again, in his most energetically bustling way; and presently came hurrying back, as they saw through the half-opened door, attended by a fiery-faced matron attired in a crunched bonnet, with particularly long strings to it hanging down her back; in conjunction with whom he instantly began to lay the cloth for dinner, polishing up the wineglasses with his own hands, brightening the silver top of the pepper-caster on his coat-sleeve, drawing corks and filling decanters, with a skill and expedition that were quite dazzling. And as if, in the course of this rubbing and polishing, he had rubbed an enchanted lamp or a magic ring, obedient to which there were twenty thousand supernatural slaves at least, suddenly there appeared a being in a white waistcoat, carrying under his arm a napkin, and attended by another being with an oblong box upon his head, from which a banquet, piping hot, was taken out and set upon the table.
Salmon, lamb, peas, innocent young potatoes, a cool salad, sliced cucumber, a tender duckling, and a tart—all there. They all came at the right time. Where they came from, didn’t appear; but the oblong box was constantly going and coming, and making its arrival known to the man in the white waistcoat by bumping modestly against the outside of the door; for, after its first appearance, it entered the room no more. He was never surprised, this man; he never seemed to wonder at the extraordinary things he found in the box; but took them out with a face expressive of a steady purpose and impenetrable character, and put them on the table. He was a kind man; gentle in his manners, and much interested in what they ate and drank. He was a learned man, and knew the flavour of John Westlock’s private sauces, which he softly and feelingly described, as he handed the little bottles round. He was a grave man, and a noiseless; for dinner being done, and wine and fruit arranged upon the board, he vanished, box and all, like something that had never been.
“Didn’t I say he was a tremendous fellow in his housekeeping?” cried Tom. “Bless my soul! It’s wonderful.”
“Ah, Miss Pinch,” said John. “This is the bright side of the life we lead in such a place. It would be a dismal life,
