Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/179

Rh "And a bruise on my elbow," muttered the gentleman, rubbing the locality in question.

"Such a very impolite manner of leaving too," said the lady. "His muffins—I mean his manners—have evidently been very much neglected."

"He must be a Chelsea householder," said the Emperor. "The householders of Chelsea are proverbial for bad manners. They are in the habit of slamming the door in the face of the tax-gatherer, with a view to injuring the tip of his nose; and I'm sure Lord Chesterfield never advised his son to do that."

It may be as well here to state that the Emperor of the Waterworks had in early life been collector of the water-rate in the neighbourhood of Chelsea; but having unfortunately given his manly intellect to drinking, and being further troubled with a propensity for speculation (some people pronounced the word without the first letter), which involved the advantageous laying-out of his sovereign's money for his own benefit, he had first lost his situation and ultimately his senses.

His lady friend had once kept a baker's shop in the vicinity of Drury Lane, and happening, in an evil hour, at the ripe age of forty, to place her affections on a young man of nineteen, the bent of whose genius was muffins, and being slighted by the youth in question, she had retired into the gin-bottle, and thence had been passed to the asylum of her native country.

Perhaps the inquiring reader will ask what the juvenile guardian of Richard is doing all this time? He has been told to keep an eye upon him; and how has he kept his trust?

He is standing, very coolly, staring at the lady and gentleman before him, and is apparently much interested in their conversation.

"I shall certainly go," said the Emperor of the Waterworks, after a pause, "and inform the superintendent of this proceeding—the superintendent ought really to know of it."

"Superintendent" was, in the asylum, the polite name given the keepers. But just as the Emperor began to shamble off in the direction of the front of the house, the boy called Slosh flew past him and ran on before, and by the time the elderly gentleman reached the porch, the boy had told the astonished keepers the whole story of the escape.

The keepers ran down to the gate, called to the porter to have it opened, and in a few minutes were in the road in front of it. They hurried thence to the river-side. There was not a sign of any human being on the swollen waters, except two men in a punt close to the opposite shore, who appeared to be eel-spearing.

"There's no boat nearer than that," said one of the men;