All the couriers, when they had done plunging about the ship and had

settled their various masters in the cabins or on the deck, congregated

together and began to chatter and smoke; the Hebrew gentlemen joining

them and looking at the carriages. There was Sir John's great carriage

that would hold thirteen people; my Lord Methuselah's carriage, my Lord

Bareacres' chariot, britzska, and fourgon, that anybody might pay for

who liked. It was a wonder how my Lord got the ready money to pay for

the expenses of the journey. The Hebrew gentlemen knew how he got it.

They knew what money his Lordship had in his pocket at that instant,

and what interest he paid for it, and who gave it him. Finally there

was a very neat, handsome travelling carriage, about which the

gentlemen speculated.

"A qui cette voiture la?" said one gentleman-courier with a large

morocco money-bag and ear-rings to another with ear-rings and a large

morocco money-bag.

"C'est a Kirsch je bense--je l'ai vu toute a l'heure--qui brenoit des

sangviches dans la voiture," said the courier in a fine German French.

Kirsch emerging presently from the neighbourhood of the hold, where he

had been bellowing instructions intermingled with polyglot oaths to the

ship's men engaged in secreting the passengers' luggage, came to give

an account of himself to his brother interpreters. He informed them

that the carriage belonged to a Nabob from Calcutta and Jamaica

enormously rich, and with whom he was engaged to travel; and at this

moment a young gentleman who had been warned off the bridge between the

paddle-boxes, and who had dropped thence on to the roof of Lord

Methuselah's carriage, from which he made his way over other carriages

and imperials until he had clambered on to his own, descended thence

and through the window into the body of the carriage, to the applause

of the couriers looking on.

"Nous allons avoir une belle traversee, Monsieur George," said the

courier with a grin, as he lifted his gold-laced cap.

"D---- your French," said the young gentleman, "where's the biscuits,

ay?" Whereupon Kirsch answered him in the English language or in such

an imitation of it as he could command--for though he was familiar with

all languages, Mr. Kirsch was not acquainted with a single one, and

spoke all with indifferent volubility and incorrectness.

The imperious young gentleman who gobbled the biscuits (and indeed it

was time to refresh himself, for he had breakfasted at Richmond full

three hours before) was our young friend George Osborne. Uncle Jos and

his mamma were on the quarter-deck with a gentleman of whom they used

to see a good deal, and the four were about to make a summer tour.




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