and Champagne to wash it down. Why, gentlemen, what do you think,
but a set of them, as they were bragging to me, turned out of a
boarding-house at Cheltenham, last year, because they had not peach
pies to their lunch!--But, here they come! shawls, and veils, and
all!--streamers flying! But mum is my cue!--Captain, are these girths
to your fancy now?" said the landlord, aloud: then, as he stooped to
alter a buckle, he said in a voice meant to be heard only by Captain
Bowles, "If there's a tongue, male or female, in the three kingdoms,
it's in that foremost woman, Mrs. Petito."

"Mrs. Petito!" repeated Lord Colambre, as the name caught his ear;
and, approaching the barouche, in which the five Abigails were now
seated, he saw the identical Mrs. Petito, who, when he left London,
had been in his mother's service.

She recognized his lordship with very gracious intimacy; and, before
he had time to ask any questions, she answered all she conceived he
was going to ask, and with a volubility which justified the landlord's
eulogium of her tongue.

"Yes, my lord! I left my Lady Clonbrony some time back--the day after
you left town; and both her ladyship and Miss Nugent was charmingly,
and would have sent their loves to your lordship, I'm sure, if they'd
any notion I should have met you, my lord, so soon. And I was very
sorry to part with them; but the fact was, my lord," said Mrs. Petito,
laying a detaining hand upon Lord Colambre's whip, one end of which
he unwittingly trusted within her reach, "I and my lady had a little
difference, which the best friends, you know, sometimes have: so
my Lady Clonbrony was so condescending to give me up to my Lady
Dashfort--and I knew no more than the child unborn that her ladyship