Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/121

  to do it, gentlemen," pleaded the waiter; "and the kitchen"

"Waiter!" said Mr. Indignation Cocker.—"Is," resumed the waiter, "so far off, that"

"Waiter!" persisted Mr. Indignation Cocker, "send somebody."

We were not without our fears that the waiter rushed out to hang himself, and we were much relieved by his fetching somebody—in gracefully flowing skirts and with a waist—who very soon settled Mr. Indignation Cocker's business.

"Oh!" said Mr. Cocker, with his fire surprisingly quenched by this apparition "I wished to ask about this bill of mine, because it appears to me that there's a little mistake here. Let me show you. Here's yesterday's sherry one and eightpence, and here we are again two shillings. And how do you explain Ninepence?"

However it was explained in tones too soft to be overheard, Mr. Cocker was heard to say nothing more than "Ah-h-h! Indeed! Thank you! Yes," and shortly afterwards went out, a milder man.

The lonely traveller with the stomach-ache had all this time suffered severely; drawing up a leg now and then, and sipping hot brandy and water with grated ginger in it. When we tasted our (very) mock turtle soup, and were instantly seized with symptoms of some disorder simulating apoplexy, and occasioned by the surcharge of the nose and brain with luke-warm dish-water holding in solution sour flour, poisonous condiments, and (say) seventy-five per cent of miscellaneous kitchen stuff rolled into balls, we were inclined to trace his disorder to that source. On the other hand, there was a silent anguish upon him too strongly resembling the results established within ourselves by the sherry, to be discarded from alarmed consideration. Again: we observed him, with terror, to be much overcome by our sole's being aired in a temporary retreat close to him, while the waiter went out (as we conceived) to see his friends. And when the curry made its appearance he suddenly retired in great disorder.

In fine, for the uneatable part of this little dinner (as contradistinguished from the undrinkable) we paid only seven shillings and sixpence each. And Bullfinch and I agreed unanimously, that no such ill-served, ill-appointed, ill-cooked, nasty little dinner could be got for the money anywhere else under the sun. With that comfort to our backs, we turned them on the dear old Temeraire, the charging Temeraire, and resolved (in the Scottish dialect) to gang nae mair to the flabby Temeraire.

and swift up in the soft blue air the crow passes over Middlesex, which spreads below, a great brown and green carpet of dark plough-land and bright pasture, through which the Thames winds like a tangled silver thread. Down from the clouds like a black flake he will drift to any village in his way that has a legend, any town that has a tradition, any old house over whose chimney he passes, if it has been consecrated by genius, or is associated with any passage of human nature that addresses itself to the human heart. Quickly he will drop from the nearest white snow-ball of cloud wherever he can find food. His scent will be keen for old legend and odd biographical incident. He will peer round for a moment, peck an instant, and mount again. His course is to be straight, swift, and westward to the sea.

He does not alight at Bedfont, but still he poises his jetty wings over the red roofs of the old posting village. There, Hood placed the scene of that quaint and grave little poem of his, "The Two Peacocks of Bedfont;" so simple and so touching a little homily against vanity and containing that exquisite couplet:

The poem seems to have arisen from the poet having one day seen two peacocks strutting in flaunting pride, and displaying their jewelled plumes among the humble grassy graves of Bedfont churchyard. This contrast he surrounded with Stothard-like pictures of a country Sunday; hand-coupled urchins in restrained talk, anxious pedagogue, pompous churchwarden stalking solemnly along, gold-bedizened beadle passing flaming through the churchyard gate, terribly conscious of the world's approval, and

The musing poet little thought of what Bedfont used to be in the regency times, when the Four-in-Hand Club's vehicles rattled up to the Black Dog, or whatever the chief inn then was, on their way from their rendezvous in George-street, Hanover-square, to the Windmill, at Salt-hill. Those were the days when baronets drove coaches, boxed the watch, smote the Charlies, wore many-caped coats, and were sudden and prompt in quarrel. Lord Sefton's and Colonel Berkeley's turn-outs were specially superb, the horses perfect, the equipments in refined taste. One rule of the club was that no coach should pass another, and that the pace should never exceed a trot. The society lasted in full vigour for upwards of twenty years. Mr. Akers, one of the most spirited members, in his enthusiastic desire to resemble a regular real