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A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY 15
vinced that her peculiar dignity of manner, and great fluency
of brag regarding her family, have been the means of bringing
hundreds of lodgers to her house, who but for her would never have
visited it.
" Gents," said Mr. James Gann, at the " Bag of Nails " that
very evening, " we have got a new lodger, and I'll stand glasses
round to his jolly good health !"
The new lodger, who was remarkable for nothing except very
black eyes, a sallow face, and a habit of smoking cigars in bed until
noon, gave his name George Brandon, Esq. As to his temper and
habits, when humbly requested by Mrs. Gann to pay in advance, he
laughed and presented her with a bank-note, never quarrelled with
a single item in her bills, walked much, and ate two mutton-chops
per diem. The young ladies, who examined all the boxes and
letters of the lodgers, as young ladies will, could not find one single
document relative to their new inmate, except a tavern-bill of the
" White Hart," to which the name of George Brandon, Esquire,
was prefixed. Any other papers which might elucidate his history
were locked up in a Bramah box, likewise marked G. B. ; and
though these were but unsatisfactory points by which to judge a
man's character, there was a something about Mr. Brandon which
caused all the ladies at Mrs. Gann's to vote he was quite a
gentleman.
When this was the case, I am happy to say it would not
unfrequently happen that Miss Rosalind or Miss Isabella would
appear in the lodger's apartments, bearing in the breakfast-cloth,
or blushingly appearing with the weekly bill, apologising for
mamma's absence, "and hoping that everything was to the
gentleman's liking."
Both the Misses Wellesley Macarty took occasion to visit Mr.
Brandon in this manner, and he received both with such a
fascinating ease and gentleman-like freedom of manner, scanning
their points from head to foot, and fixing his great black eyes
so earnestly on their faces, that the blushing creatures turned
away abashed, and yet pleased, and had many conversations about
him.
"Law, Bell," said Miss Rosalind, "what a chap that Brandon
is! I don't half like him, I do declare !" Than which there can
be no greater compliment from a woman to a man.
"No more do I neither," says Bell. "The man stares so,
and says such things ! Just now, when Becky brought his paper
and sealing-wax—the silly girl brought black and red too—I
took them up to ask which he would have, and what do you
think he said ?"