Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/229

Rh that knocked about in a stand-up fight with a lad three times his weight and size."

"Then I can send the boy, and you'll get him the situation?" said Mr. Budgen's young man, who did not seem particularly interested in the rather elaborate recital of the exploits of the invalid tiger.

"He can have a character, I suppose?" inquired the lady.

"Oh, ah, to be sure. Budgen will give him a character."

"You will impress upon the youth," said Mrs. Moper, with great dignity, "that he will not be able to make this his permanence 'ome. The pay is good, and the meals is reg'lar, but the situation is tempory."

"All right," said Mr. Budgen's assistant; "he doesn't want a situation for long. I'll bring him round myself this evening—good afternoon;" with which very brief farewell, the flaxen-haired, dark-eyed milkman strode out of the kitchen.

"Hum!" muttered the cook, "his manners has not the London polish: I meant to have ast him to tea."

"Why, I'm blest," exclaimed the scullerymaid suddenly, "if he haven't been and gone and left his yoke and pails behind him! Well, of all the strange milkmen I ever come a-nigh, if he ain't the strangest!"

She might have thought him stranger still, perhaps, this light-haired milkman, had she seen him hail a stray cab in Brook Street, spring into it, snatch off his flaxen locks, whose hyacinthine waves were in the convenient form known by that most disagreeable of words, a wig; snatch off also the holland blouse common to the purveyors of milk, and rolling the two into a bundle, stuff them into the pocket of his shooting-jacket, before throwing himself back into the corner of the vehicle, to enjoy a meditative cigar, as his charioteer drives his best pace in the direction of that transpontine temple of Esculapius, Mr. Darley's surgery. Daredevil Dick has made the first move in that fearful game of chess which is to be played between him and the Count de Marolles.

the evening which follows the very afternoon during which Richard Marwood made his first and only essay in the milk-trade, the Count and Countess de Marolles attend a musical party—I beg pardon, I should, gentle reader, as you know, have said a soirée musicale—at the house of a lady of high rank in Belgrave Square. London was almost empty, and this was one of the last parties of the season; but it is a goodly and an