The next persons whom little Mrs. Timmins was bent upon asking, were Mr. and Mrs. John Rowdy, of the firm of Stumpy, Rowdy and Co., of Brobdingnag Gardens, of the Prairie, Putney, and of Lombard Street, City.
Mrs. Timinins and Mrs. Rowdy had been brought up at the same school together, and there was always a little rivalry between them, from the day when they contended for the French prize at school to last week, when each had a stall at the Fancy Fair for the benefit of the Daughters of Decayed Muffin-men; and when Mrs. Timmins danced against Mrs. Rowdy in the Scythe Mazurka at the Polish Ball, headed by Mrs. Hugh Slasher. Rowdy took twenty-three pounds more than Timmins in the Muffin transaction (for she had possession of a kettle-holder worked by the hands of R-y-lty, which brought crowds to her stall); but in the Mazurka Rosa conquered: she has the prettiest little foot possible (which in a red boot and silver heel looked so lovely that even the Chinese ambassador remarked it), whereas Mrs. Rowdy's foot is no trifle, as Lord Cornbury acknowledged when it came down on his lordship's boot-tip as they danced together amongst the Scythes.
“These people are ruining themselves,” said Mrs. John Rowdy to her husband, on receiving the pink note. It was carried round by that rogue of a buttony page in the evening; and he walked to Brobdingnag Gardens, and in the Park afterwards, with a young lady who is kitchen-maid at 27, and who is not more than fourteen years older than little Buttons.
“These people are ruining themselves,” said Mrs. John to her husband. “Rosa says she has asked the Bungays.”
“Bungays indeed! Timmins was always a tuft-hunter,” said Rowdy, who had been at college with the barrister, and who, for his own part, has no more objection to a lord than you or I have; and adding, “Hang him, what business has HE to be giving parties?” allowed Mrs. Rowdy, nevertheless, to accept Rosa's invitation.
“When I go to business to-morrow, I will just have a look at Mr. Fitz's account,” Mr. Rowdy thought; “and if it is overdrawn, as it usually is, why . . .” The announcement of Mrs. Rowdy's brougham here put an end to this agreeable train of thought; and the banker and his lady stepped into it to join a snug little family-party of two-and-twenty, given by Mr. and Mrs. Secondchop at their great house on the other side of the Park.
“Rowdys 2, Bungays 3, ourselves and mamma 3, 2 Sawyers,” calculated little Rosa.
“General Gulpin,” Rosa continued, “eats a great deal, and is very stupid, but he looks well at table with his star and ribbon. Let us put HIM down!” and she noted down “Sir Thomas and Lady Gulpin, 2. Lord Castlemouldy, 1.”
“You will make your party abominably genteel and stupid,” groaned Timmins. “Why don't you ask some of our old friends? Old Mrs. Portman has asked us twenty times, I am sure, within the last two years.”
“And the last time we went there, there was pea-soup for dinner!” Mrs. Timmins said, with a look of ineffable scorn.
“Nobody can have been kinder than the Hodges have always been to us; and some sort of return we might make, I think.”
“Return, indeed! A pretty sound it is on the staircase to hear 'Mr. and Mrs. 'Odge and Miss 'Odges' pronounced by Billiter, who always leaves his h's out. No, no: see attorneys at your chambers, my dear—but what could the poor creatures do in OUR society?” And so, one by one, Timmins's old friends were tried and eliminated by Mrs. Timmins, just as if she had been an Irish Attorney-General, and they so many Catholics on Mr. Mitchel's jury.
Mrs. Fitzroy insisted that the party should be of her very best company. Funnyman, the great wit, was asked, because of his jokes; and Mrs. Butt, on whom he practises; and Potter, who is asked because everybody else asks him; and Mr. Ranville Ranville of the Foreign Office, who might give some news of the Spanish squabble; and Botherby, who has suddenly sprung up into note because he is intimate with the French Revolution, and visits Ledru-Rollin and Lamartine. And these, with a couple more who are amis de la maison, made up the twenty, whom Mrs. Timmins thought she might safely invite to her little dinner.
But the deuce of it was, that when the answers to the invitations came back, everybody accepted! Here was a pretty quandary. How they were to get twenty into their dining-room was a calculation which poor Timmins could not solve at all; and he paced up and down the little room in dismay.
“Pooh!” said Rosa with a laugh. “Your sister Blanche looked very well in one of my dresses last year; and you know how stout she is. We will find some means to accommodate them all, depend upon it.”
Mrs. John Rowdy's note to dear Rosa, accepting the latter's invitation, was a very gracious and kind one; and Mrs. Fitz showed it to her husband when he came back from chambers. But there was another note which had arrived for him by this time from Mr. Rowdy—or rather from the firm; and to the effect that Mr. F. Timmins had overdrawn his account 28L. 18s. 6d., and was requested to pay that sum to his obedient servants, Stumpy, Rowdy and Co.
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