Amelia had to receive and entertain these gentlemen and their ladies.
From these she heard how soon Smith would be in Council; how many lacs
Jones had brought home with him, how Thomson's House in London had
refused the bills drawn by Thomson, Kibobjee, and Co., the Bombay
House, and how it was thought the Calcutta House must go too; how very
imprudent, to say the least of it, Mrs. Brown's conduct (wife of Brown
of the Ahmednuggur Irregulars) had been with young Swankey of the Body
Guard, sitting up with him on deck until all hours, and losing
themselves as they were riding out at the Cape; how Mrs. Hardyman had
had out her thirteen sisters, daughters of a country curate, the Rev:
Felix Rabbits, and married eleven of them, seven high up in the
service; how Hornby was wild because his wife would stay in Europe, and
Trotter was appointed Collector at Ummerapoora. This and similar talk
took place at the grand dinners all round. They had the same
conversation; the same silver dishes; the same saddles of mutton,
boiled turkeys, and entrees. Politics set in a short time after
dessert, when the ladies retired upstairs and talked about their
complaints and their children.
Mutato nomine, it is all the same. Don't the barristers' wives talk
about Circuit? Don't the soldiers' ladies gossip about the Regiment?
Don't the clergymen's ladies discourse about Sunday-schools and who
takes whose duty? Don't the very greatest ladies of all talk about that
small clique of persons to whom they belong? And why should our Indian
friends not have their own conversation?--only I admit it is slow for
the laymen whose fate it sometimes is to sit by and listen.
Before long Emmy had a visiting-book, and was driving about regularly
in a carriage, calling upon Lady Bludyer (wife of Major-General Sir
Roger Bludyer, K.C.B., Bengal Army); Lady Huff, wife of Sir G. Huff,
Bombay ditto; Mrs. Pice, the Lady of Pice the Director, &c. We are not
long in using ourselves to changes in life. That carriage came round
to Gillespie Street every day; that buttony boy sprang up and down from
the box with Emmy's and Jos's visiting-cards; at stated hours Emmy and
the carriage went for Jos to the Club and took him an airing; or,
putting old Sedley into the vehicle, she drove the old man round the
Regent's Park. The lady's maid and the chariot, the visiting-book and
the buttony page, became soon as familiar to Amelia as the humble
routine of Brompton. She accommodated herself to one as to the other.
If Fate had ordained that she should be a Duchess, she would even have
done that duty too. She was voted, in Jos's female society, rather a
pleasing young person--not much in her, but pleasing, and that sort of
thing.