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622 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP
of Mrs. General Baynes's horror at the idea of her son-in-law letting
lodgings greatly soothed and comforted Philip. The lodgings were
absolutely taken by our country acquaintance, Miss Pybus, who was
coming up for the May meetings, and whom we persuaded (Heaven
be good to us) that she would find a most desirable quiet residence
in the house of a man with three squalling children. Miss P. came,
then, with my wife, to look at the apartments ; and we allured her
by describing to her the delightful musical services at the Foundling
hard by; and she was very much pleased with Mrs. Philip, and
did not even wince at the elder children, whose pretty faces won
the kind old lady's heart ; and I am ashamed to say we were mum
about the baby : and Pybus was going to close for the lodgings,
when Philip burst out of his little room, without his coat, I believe,
and objurgated a little printer's boy, who was sitting in the hall,
waiting for some " copy " regarding which he had made a blunder ;
and Philip used such violent language towards the little lazy boy,
that Pybus said "she never could think of taking apartments in
that house," and hurried thence in a panic. When Brandon heard
of this project of letting lodgings, she was in a fury. She might let
lodgin's, but it wasn't for Philip to do so. " Let lodgin's, indeed !
Buy a broom, and sweep a crossin'!" Brandon always thought
Charlotte a poor-spirited creature, and the way she scolded Mrs.
Firmin about this transaction was not a little amusing. Charlotte
was not, angry. She liked the scheme as little as Brandon. No
other person ever asked for lodgings in Charlotte's house. May
and its meetings came to an end. The old ladies went back to
their country towns. The missionaries returned to Caffraria. (Ah!
where are the pleasant-looking Quakeresses of our youth, with their
comely faces, and pretty dove-coloured robes ? They say the goodly
sect is dwindling—dwindling.) The Quakeresses went out of town :
then the fashionable world began to move: the Parliament went
out of town. In a word, everybody who could, made away for a
holiday, whilst poor Philip remained at his work, snipping and
pasting his paragraphs, and doing his humble drudgery.
A sojourn on the sea-shore was prescribed by Dr. Goodenough,
as absolutely necessary for Charlotte and her young ones, and when
Philip pleaded certain cogent reasons why the family could not take
the medicine prescribed by the Doctor, that eccentric physician had
recourse to the same pocket-book which we have known him to
produce on a former occasion ; and took from it, for what I know,
some of the very same notes which he had formerly given to the
Little Sister. "I suppose you may as well have them as that
rascal Hunt," said the Doctor, scowling very fiercely. " Don't tell
me. Stuff and nonsense. Pooh ! Pay me when you are a rich