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$88 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP
think is a mark of attention. Hadn't you better adopt the Russian
system at once, and go out and buy me a whip, and present it to
me with a curtsey, and your compliments ; and a meek prayer that
I should use it ?" " Present you a whip ! present you a goose !"
says the lady, who encourages scolding in other husbands, it seems,
but won't suffer a word from her own.
Both disputants had set their sentimental hearts on the marriage
of this young man and this young woman. Little Charlotte's heart
was so bent on the match, that it would break, we fancied, if she
were disappointed ; and in her mother's behaviour we felt, from the
knowledge we had of the woman's disposition, there was a serious
cause for alarm. Should a better offer present itself, Mrs. Baynes,
we feared, would fling over poor Philip : or it was in reason and
nature, that he would come to a quarrel with her, and in the course
of the pitched battle which must ensue between them, he would
fire off expressions mortally injurious. Are there not many people,
in every one's acquaintance, who, as soon as they have made a
bargain, repent of it? Philip, as "preserver" of General Baynes,
in the first fervour of family gratitude for that act of self-sacrifice
on the young man's part, was very well. But gratitude wears out ;
or suppose a woman says, " It is my duty to my child to recall
my word ; and not allow her to fling herself away on a beggar."
Suppose that you and I, strongly inclined to do a mean action, get
a good, available, and moral motive for it? I trembled for poor
Philip's course of true love, and little Charlotte's chances, when
these surmises crossed my mind. There was a hope still in the
honour and gratitude of General Baynes. He would not desert his
young friend and benefactor. Now General Baynes was a brave
man of war, and so was John of Marlborough a brave man of war ;
but it is certain that both were afraid of their wives.
We have said by whose invitation and encouragement General
Baynes was induced to bring his family to the boarding-house at
Paris ; the instigation, namely, of his friend and companion in arms,
the gallant Colonel Bunch. When the Baynes family arrived, the
Bunches were on the steps of Madame's house, waving a welcome
to the new-comers. It was, " Here we are, Bunch my boy." " Glad
to see you, Baynes. Right well you're looking, and so's Mrs. B."
And the General replies, " And so are you, Bunch ; and so do you,
Mrs. B." " How do, boys? How d'you do, Miss Charlotte? Come
to show the Paris fellows what a pretty girl is, hey ? Blooming like
a rose, Baynes !" " I'm telling the General," cries the Colonel to
the General's lady, " the girl's the very image of her mother." In
this case poor Charlotte must have looked like a yellow rose, for Mrs.
Baynes was of a bilious temperament and complexion, whereas Miss