CHAP. X.

A plate of pudding was now handed to Mr. Faddle, who audibly assured the company, “he could furnish a most excellent receipt for one, upon a very economic plan.”

“I never heard of a parson making a plum-pudding before,” said my uncle: “they should never cook any thing but sermons. Why, your Reverence, I’m shocked; you would not convert a pulpit-cloth into a pudding-bag, I hope.”

This speech, though uttered with much gravity, caused a hearty laugh at the coddling parson’s expense, which seemed to nettle him, though he did not retort. The cloth was soon after removed, and the desert made its appearance; but as it was not in the Bond-street style, Mrs. Deposit could touch nothing but a prime nectarine; observing, the whole time she was in London last summer, “she lived upon ice and peaches!”

“And, pray, Madam,” said my uncle, very gravely, “what may you live upon in the winter?”

“Turtle and chantillies!” returned the lady.

“And, pray, what may a chantilly be?” asked my uncle.

“La! my dear Sir, don’t you know what it is? ’Pon honour, you country folks—excuse me—vegetate like cabbages! He, he, he!”

“Cabbages! Madam,” retorted my enraged uncle. “I beg an explanation of that opprobrious sarcasm. I believe your town residence is not far from the cabbage repository; therefore, please to explain, Madam: I shall thank you for the intelligence.”

“Why, then, Sir,” answered Mrs. Deposit (much piqued at the retort of the cabbage repository), “do you not vegetate, more and more like a cabbage, every day of your life? Do you not grow “white-headed and hard-hearted!”—eh! Mr. Tweazy?”

Ha, ha, ha! resounded from the bottom of the table in one united peal of rough merriment, till interrupted by the Divine, Mr. Faddle, who requested an explanation of the chantilly.

“Why, Sir,” replied Mrs. Deposit, suppressing a smile, “I really cannot give you the express receipt;” and she winked sarcastically at the Doctor: “but a chantilly is a kind of a sort of a delicious olio, the centre ornament of every stylish table, composed of cakes, whipt cream, sweetmeats, and so forth, served in a ratifia basket, with barley-sugar ormoulu, lion’s claws supporting its elegant fabric. It’s a very pretty French kickshaw invention, if we could but keep it ourselves; but, really, it is becoming so common a dish at your city gorges, that it is now nearly expelled from the western galas, I do assure you.”

The Widow Quiz observed, “it must be a very extravagant dish.”

“La! that’s nothing!” replied Mrs. Deposit. “I would not give a rush to sit down to a dinner without the table-decker’s tablet of information, to instruct me, that a dolphin was a disguised tongue, or a beautiful tortoise was nothing more than a ragoued pigeon; a dish of blamonge converted into a pack of cards; with a fierce-looking hedgehog, composed of cake and custard! Oh! there’s nothing like dashing and flashing!”

“Yes, yes!” cried my uncle; “you’re right, Madam. Dash into Hyde Park one day, and dash into the Gazette the next! that’s high ton with the new flash-in-pan societies, I understand.”

“True,” replied Mrs. Deposit, very composedly; “such are the casualties of fashion: but I don’t comprehend what you call the ‘flash-in-pan societies.’”

“I mean,” replied my uncle, “the nightly card parties, formed of young tradesmen, who, neglecting all duties, moral and divine, leave an innocent, wretched young wife of eighteen, to weep, alone, a husband’s destructive follies over the cradle of her hapless progeny, till day-light dawns upon her tearful eye, and sends the ruined gamester to his thorny pillow, where love and fond fidelity have lost their charms, and every place, save home, affords him pleasure. Such is the minor husband, the mere married boy, rushing, with incautious step, to ruin’s brink, and cruelly involving in his fate the innocent and virtuous victim of his fancied happiness.”

“Oh! but that’s nothing extraordinary, Sir,” cried Mrs. Deposit. “Man and wife, now-a-days, a’n’t like lock and key, that the one can’t move without the other. Why, Deposit and I are the most fashionable couple imaginable: we never intrude on each other’s pleasures: he has his card parties, I mine: he mounts his hunter, and dashes in the Ride; I pop into Lady Lounge’s barouche, and sport myself in the Drive every Sunday; I don’t put on my cottage clumps, and, glueing myself upon hubby’s arm, content myself with fagging through the plebeian pedestrian throng. La! we should both be the most wretched creatures living. Shouldn’t we, George?”

“Precisely so, my love,” replied the non-chalante husband of fashion. “The system we married on was a total independence of principle; for, as we had both arrived at the years of discretion, we each resolved to pursue the plan most consonant to our wishes; and, I flatter myself, we are as fond and happy a couple——”

“As any fashionable couple possibly can be,” interrupted my uncle, whose irritated temper would not permit Mr. Deposit the privilege of finishing his flourishing sentence.

“Why, my dear Mrs. Tonic,” hemm’d the Doctor, “I’m afraid you and I must go to school again; for these are lessons we have never learnt or practised.”

“Then, I’m sure, my dear, we are too old to learn now; and, therefore, I beg to remain in my happy ignorance,” said Mrs. Tonic.

“Well, well! hem, hem! agreed, old woman, agreed!”

The conversation now became vapid; and the ladies soon after withdrew into the garden, for a walk and a gossip; Mrs. Tonic not being blessed with a drawing-room, and the sun having darted its most fervent ray of excessive power on the parlour they were first received in. Mrs. Deposit and Mrs. Fungus both declared the heat would annihilate them; and they, in consequence, made what they termed a gipsey party, under a cherry-tree; where, seated on the grass, they retailed envy, hatred, and malice, from the grain to the pound, without the assistance of the shop scales, as most other female country parties do, who have little else to employ them; for, be it known to my readers, Mrs. Deposit and Mrs. Fungus were mere temporary inhabitants of the village, who condescended to rusticate themselves for three months in a cottage ornée, to recruit the excesses of winter balls and galas, “by gleaning,” as Mrs. Fungus elegantly styled it, “the roses of health, to adorn the vulgar day-light complexion that the summer’s glaring sun exposed to the eye of scrutiny, till the less glaring beam of pink wax scented lights suffered the fascinating convenient Christmas bloom to be substituted, undetected.”

This cogent reason, subjoined to a few provoking pimples, induced these ladies to seclude themselves in durance vile, living upon physic and water-gruel, of which self-vanity induced them to swallow many potions; while their respective husbands honoured the rural residence with their company as often as business or inclination permitted; Mr. Fungus being in the speculative line, and Mr. Deposit constantly engaged in his pulpit, hammering his elaborate discourse into the ears of his auditors, congregated round him to buy bargains at his tonish repository.