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286 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP
had one of the children asleep on her shoulder; and another was
toddling at her side, holding by his sister's dress, and admiring
Mr. Firinin's whiskers, that flamed and curled very luminously and
gloriously, like to the rays of the setting sun.
"I am very glad we met, sir," says Philip, in the most friendly
manner, taking leave of the General at the gate of his hotel. " I
hope you won't go away to-morrow, and that I may come and pay
my respects to Mrs. Baynes." Again he salutes that lady with a
coup de chapeau. Again he bows to Miss Baynes. She makes a
pretty curtsey enough, considering that she has a baby asleep on
her shoulder. And they enter the hotel, the excellent Marie
marshalling them to fitting apartments, where some of them, I have
no doubt, will sleep very soundly. How much more comfortably
might poor Baynes and his wife have slept had they known what
were Philip's feelings regarding them !
We both admired Charlotte, the tall girl who carried her little
brother, and around whom the others clung. And we spoke loudly
in Miss Charlotte's praises to Mrs. Pendennis, when we joined that
lady at dinner. In the praise of Mrs. Baynes we had not a great
deal to say, further than that she seemed to take command of the
whole expedition, including the general officer, her husband.
Though Marie's beds at the " Hotel des Bains " are as comfortable
as any beds in Europe, you see that admirable chambermaid
cannot lay out a clean easy conscience upon the clean fragrant
pillow-case; and General and Mrs. Baynes owned, in after days,
that one of the most dreadful nights they ever passed was that of
their first landing in France. What refugee from his country can
fly from himself? Railways were not as yet in that part of France.
The General was too poor to fly with a couple of private carriages,
which he must have had for his family of "noof," his governess,
and two servants. Encumbered with such a train, his enemy would
speedily have pursued and overtaken him. It is a fact that,
immediately after landing at his hotel, he and his commanding
officer went off to see when they could get places for—never mind
the name of the place where they really thought of taking refuge.
They never told, but Mrs. General Baynes had a sister, Mrs. Major
MacWhirter (married to MacW. of the Bengal Cavalry), and the
sisters loved each other very affectionately, especially by letter, for
it must be owned that they quarrelled frightfully when together ;
and Mrs. MacWhirter never could bear that her younger sister
should be taken out to dinner before her, because she was married
to a superior officer. Well, their little differences were forgotten
when the two ladies were apart. The sisters wrote to each other
prodigious long letters, in which household affairs, the children's