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478 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP
Some were engaged, others away in the country keeping Christmas.
In fine, we considered ourselves rather lucky in securing old Lady
Hixie, who lives hard by in Westminster, and who will pass for a
lady of fashion when no person of greater note is present. My wife
told her that the object of the dinner was to make our friend Firmin
acquainted with the editor and proprietor of the Pall Mall Gazette,
with whom it was important that he should be on the most amicable
footing. Oh ! very well. Lady Hixie promised to be quite gracious
to the newspaper gentleman and his wife ; and kept her promise
most graciously during the evening. Our good friend Mrs. Mugford
was the first of our guests to arrive. She drove " in her trap " from
her villa in the suburbs; and after putting up his carriage at a
neighbouring livery-stable, her groom volunteered to help our servants
in waiting at dinner. His zeal and activity were remarkable.
China smashed, and dish-covers clanged in the passage. Mrs.
Mugford said that " Sam was at his old tricks ;" and I hope the
hostess showed she was mistress of herself amidst that fall of china.
Mrs. Mugford came before the appointed hour, she said, in order
to see our children. "With our late London dinner hours," she
remarked, "children was never seen now." At Hampstead, hers
always appeared at the dessert, and enlivened the table with their
innocent outcries for oranges and struggles for sweetmeats. In the
nursery, where one little maid, in her crisp long night-gown, was
saying her prayers ; where another little person, in the most airy
costume, was standing before the great barred fire ; where a third
Lilliputian was sitting up in its night-cap and surplice, surveying
the scene below from its crib;—the ladies found our dear Little
Sister installed. She had come to see her little pets (she had known
two or three of them from the very earliest times). She was a great
favourite amongst them all ; and, I believe, conspired with the cook
down below in preparing certain delicacies for the table. A fine
conversation then ensued about our children, about the Mugford
children, about babies in general And then the artful women (the
house-mistress and the Little Sister) brought Philip on the tapis, and
discoursed, à- qui mieux, about his virtues, his misfortunes, his engagement,
and that dear little creature to whom he was betrothed. This
conversation went on until carriage-wheels were heard in the square,
and the knocker (there were actually knockers in that old-fashioned
place and time) began to peal. "Oh, bother! There's the
company a-comm'," Mrs. Mugford said ; and, arranging her cap and
flounces, with neat-handed Mrs. Brandon's aid, came downstairs,
after taking a tender leave of the little people, to whom she sent a
present next day of a pile of fine Christmas books, which had come
to the Pall Mall Gazette for review. The kind woman had been