Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 094.djvu/144

134 and gradually rising till it filled the whole castle with its roar, acted the part of the merchants' ringing-out bell on Change, and completely put a stop to his bragging. He could scarcely hear himself speak, let alone any one else. Finding it was of no use contending with the gong, he hastily finished his glass, and buttoning his pockets with a slap, to feel that his purse was inside, proceeded to waddle on his heels into the entrance- hall, from whence the sound proceeded.

"What's the row?" asked he of the gigantic footman who was plying the gong with the muffler, making, if possible, more noise than before.

"To drive the rats away," bellowed the man into the colonel's ear.

"Drive the rats away!—one wouldn't think there were any rats in a house like this," roared the colonel, in opposition to the gong.

"Great many," shouted the man, as he still thundered away.

"Humph!" mused the colonel, wondering how long the noise would last.

"Did you say you wanted your carriage, sir?" asked the original gentleman's gentleman whom we found lounging at the castle door, now shuffling with a sort of half-impudent obsequiousness up to our friend.

"No, I didn't," responded the colonel; adding, "I don't care if I have it, though."

"Will order it round directly, sir," replied the man, hurrying away.

The gong still sounding, now rumbling in low, tantalising murmurs as if done, and then swelling again into thunder, and the colonel, like most noisy men, being unable to bear any noise but his own, at length roared out, "Now, Johnny, have you had enough of your drum?"

Johnny thought not, and continued to rumble and roar much to the colonel's annoyance, who kept shaking his head and kicking out his fins, and looking at him, wishing he had him in the barracks at home. The noise, indeed, was so absorbing as to overpower sundry pretty speeches of Angelena's as she roamed about the noble hall on the arm of our Tom. Mrs. Blunt alone seemed grateful, inasmuch as it had roused the colonel from his brandy; she thought they would now get home safe, which she was by no means so certain of before, the colonel being a desperately rash man on the road when in liquor. We will finish our chapter by getting them under weigh.

The soldier-coachman-footman-groom, who had gone over with the colonel's hunter, as he called his little elephant-like horse, being unable to turn the vehicle out of the yard, his lordship’s second coachman condescended to mount the box and bring the dirty thing round.

"Thank'e," exclaimed the colonel, as he stood on the steps of the Gothic-arched entrance-hall fumbling on a pair of dirty buckskin gloves as the carriage drew up. "Thank'e," repeated he; "I'll do as much for you another time"—that, or, "I'll remember you, my man," being all the return the colonel ever made for services.

"Well, now bundle in," said the colonel to Mrs. Blunt, as a spruce footman stood with the coach door in his hand, making a sorry contrast between its dirty red worsted-bound drab lining and his own smart scarlet and silver-laced white livery.

"I think I'll ride outside with you," observed the prudent mamma, in reply to the colonel's commands to "bundle in."

"Ride outside with me!" growled the colonel, "what's that for?"