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336 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP
song frong pas payy encor! Prommy, pas payy!" Fancy, I say,
what a dreary life that must have been at the select boarding-house,
where these two parties were doing battle daily after dinner!
Fancy, at the select soirées, the General's lady seizing upon one
guest after another, and calling out her wrongs, and pointing to
the wrong-doer ; and poor Madame Smolensk, smirking and smiling,
and flying from one end of the salon to the other, and thanking M.
Pivoine for his charming romance, and M. Brumm for his admirable
performance on the violoncello, and even asking those poor Miss
Bolderos to perform their duet—for her heart melted towards them.
Not ignorant of evil, she had learned to succour the miserable.
She knew what poverty was, and had to coax scowling duns, and
wheedle vulgar creditors. "Tenez, Monsieur Philippe," she said,
"the Générale is too cruel. There are others here who might
complain, and are silent." Philip felt all this ; the conduct of his
future mother-in-law filled him with dismay and horror. And some
time after these remarkable circumstances, he told me, blushing as
he spoke, a humiliating secret. "Do you know, sir," says he,
" that that autumn I made a pretty good thing of it with one thing
or another. I did my work for the Pall Mall Gazette : and Smith,
of the Daily Intelligencer, wanting a month's holiday, gave me his
letter and ten francs a day. And at that very time I met Redman,
who had owed me twenty pounds ever since we were at college,
and who was just coming back flush from Homburg, and paid me.
Well, now. Swear you won't tell. Swear on your faith as a
Christian man! With this money I went, sir, privily to Mrs.
Boldero. I said if she would pay the dragon—I mean Mrs. Baynes
—I would lend her the money. And I did lend her the money,
and the Boldero never paid back Mrs. Baynes. Don't mention it.
Promise me you won't tell Mrs. Baynes. I never expected to get
Redman's money, you know, and am no worse off than before. One
day of the Grandes Eaux we went to Versailles, I think, and the
Honourable Mrs. Boldero gave us the slip. She left the poor girls
behind her in pledge, who, to do them justice, cried and were in a
dreadful way ; and when Mrs. Baynes, on our return, began shrieking
about her 'sang song frong,' Madame Smolensk fairly lost
patience for once, and said, 'Mais, madame, vous nous fatiguez
avec vos cinq cent francs ;' on which the other muttered something
about ' Ansolong,' but was briskly taken up by her husband, who
said, ' By George, Eliza, Madame is quite right. And I wish the
five hundred francs were in the sea.' "
Thus, you understand, if Mrs. General Baynes thought some
people were " stuck-up people," some people can—and hereby do
by these presents—pay off Mrs. Baynes, by furnishing the public