IFE

BY

YOUNG DANDO.

As to the man putting the luggage on his head, as a sort of sign, I
adopt it from this hour.

I date this from London, where I have come, as a good profligate,
graceless bachelor, for a day or two; leaving my wife and babbies at the
seaside. . . . Heavens! if you were but here at this minute! A piece of
salmon and a steak are cooking in the kitchen; it's a very wet day, and
I have had a fire lighted; the wine sparkles on a side table; the room
looks the more snug from being the only _un_dismantled one in the house;
plates are warming for Forster and Maclise, whose knock I am momentarily
expecting; that groom I told you of, who never comes into the house,
except when we are all out of town, is walking about in his
shirt-sleeves without the smallest consciousness of impropriety; a great
mound of proofs are waiting to be read aloud, after dinner. With what a
shout I would clap you down into the easiest chair, my genial Felton, if
you could but appear, and order you a pair of slippers instantly!

Since I have written this, the aforesaid groom--a very small man (as the
fashion is), with fiery red hair (as the fashion is _not_)--has looked
very hard at me and fluttered about me at the same time, like a giant
butterfly. After a pause, he says, in a Sam Wellerish kind of way: "I
vent to the club this mornin', sir. There vorn't no letters, sir." "Very
good, Topping." "How's missis, sir?" "Pretty well, Topping." "Glad to
hear it, sir. _My_ missis ain't wery well, sir." "No!" "No, sir, she's
a goin', sir, to have a hincrease wery soon, and it makes her rather
nervous, sir; and ven a young voman gets at all down at sich a time,
sir, she goes down wery deep, sir." To this sentiment I replied
affirmatively, and then he adds, as he stirs the fire (as if he were
thinking out loud): "Wot a mystery it is! Wot a go is natur'!" With
which scrap of philosophy, he gradually gets nearer to the door, and so
fades out of the room.

This same man asked me one day, soon after I came home, what Sir John
Wilson was. This is a friend of mine, who took our house and servants,
and everything as it stood, during our absence in America. I told him an
officer. "A wot, sir?" "An officer." And then, for fear he should think
I meant a police-officer, I added, "An officer in the army." "I beg your
pardon, sir," he said, touching his hat, "but the club as I always drove
him to wos the United Servants."

The