'I say no more,' quoth the squire. 'But what I said was true. The
fellow gives his little dinners and suppers to his marchionesses,
countesses, duchesses, and plays clown and pantaloon among the men. He
thinks a parcel o' broidered petticoats 'll float him. So they may till
a tradesman sent stark mad pops a pin into him. Harry, I'd as lief hang
on to a fire-ship. Here's Ilchester tells me . . . and Ilchester
speaks of him under his breath now as if he were sitting in a pew funking
the parson. Confound the fellow! I say he's guilty of treason. Pooh!
who cares! He cuts out the dandies of his day, does he? He's past
sixty, if he's a month. It's all damned harlequinade. Let him twirl off
one columbine or another, or a dozen, and then--the last of him! Fellow
makes the world look like a farce. He 's got about eight feet by five to
caper on, and all London gaping at him--geese! Are you a gentleman and a
man of sense, Harry Richmond, to let yourself be lugged about in public--
by the Lord! like a pair of street-tumblers in spangled haunch-bags,
father and boy, on a patch of carpet, and a drum banging, and tossed and
turned inside out, and my God! the ass of a fellow strutting the ring
with you on his shoulder! That's the spectacle. And you, Harry, now
I 'll ask you, do you mean your wife--egad, it'd be a pretty scene, with
your princess in hip-up petticoats, stiff as bottle-funnel top down'ards,
airing a whole leg, and knuckling a tambourine!'

'Not crying, my dear lad?' Captain Bulsted put his arm round me kindly,
and tried to catch a glimpse of my face. I let him see I was not going
through that process. 'Whew!' said he, 'and enough to make any Christian
sweat! You're in a bath, Harry. I wouldn't expect the man who murdered
his godmother for one shilling and fivepence three-farthings the other
day, to take such a slinging, and think he deserved it.'

My power of endurance had reached its limit.