Mr Facey Romford's Hounds Read Online Free PDF

was lucky he did, for Sponge coming down-stairs peeped through the dun-hole of the little retiring-room, and recognising his great shoulders and backward-growing whiskers, beat a retreat and stole out the back way.
    â€œAnd may I ask who you are in mourning for?” inquired Lucy, as soon as the first rush of politeness was over.
    â€œOh, me Oncle, me Oncle Gilroy,” replied Facey.
    â€œGone at last, is he,” said Lucy, who recollected to have heard about him.
    â€œGone at last,” assented Facey, with a downward nod.
    â€œWell, and I hope he’s left you something ’andsome,” observed Lucy.
    â€œLeave! Oh, bless you, I never expected nothin’ from him. He had a wife and ever so many bairns.”
    â€œYou don’t say so!” exclaimed Lucy, clasping her beautiful hands; “I always understood he was a bachelor. Well, Mr S. will be astonished when he hears that,” added she, turning her lustrous darkly-fringed eyes up to the ceiling.
    â€œFact, however,” said Facey significantly.
    â€œYou surprise me,” said Lucy, fearing the little debt would not be wiped off. “Well,” continued she, “it’s lucky for those that can do without.”
    â€œAh, that’s another matter,” muttered Facey, who saw how it bore on the sivin pun ten. “Money’s always acceptable,” continued he, looking round the shining shop and wondering if he would ever get paid. There seemed plenty of stock, provided the barrels and canisters were not all dummies. How would it do to take it out in kind? Better get money if he could, thought he. Facey then applied himself to sounding Lucy as to where Sponge was likely to be found. Oh, he would be sure to find him at any time; could scarcely come wrong. He hadn’t been gone five minutes when Mr Romford came. Would be so vexed when he returned to find he’d missed him. Facey rather doubted this latter assertion, and was half inclined to ask why Soapey had not answered his letters, but Lucy being too pretty to have any words with, and appearing to believe what she said, he pretended that he did too, and shortly afterwards left to get a beefsteak dinner at the Blue Posts in Cork Street. As he turned out of the shop he encountered a blear-eyed brandy-faced man, with a numbered badge on his breast, and an old red cotton kerchief twisted carelessly round his battered hat, whose seedy greasy clothes seemed greatly in want of a washing. The wearer started at the sight of our friend. It was none other than Soapey Sponge’s late job stud groom, Mr Leather, crawling from the cab-stand for his weekly stipend of eighteenpence of hush-money for a certain horse robbery he had been engaged in with Mr Sponge before he married Lucy, and the aged head within the battered hat was the one that butted the Romford stomach, and knocked its owner neck and crop backward down-stairs. ( Vide “Mr Sponge’s Sporting Tour.”) Romford, however, did not recognise it, and Leather wisely thinking the reminiscence would not be productive of a tip, let him pass; so, after strolling into the Haymarket, Leather returned leisurely to Lucy, and told her that he real lie did believe he’d seen that Mr Romford Facey wot wanted to steal his old master’s clothes. And Lucy said he had. The fact was that Romford Facey, as Mr Leather called him, had wanted to detain the clothes for this identical sivin pun ten he now came in quest of, and Leather showing fight had ultimately been the victor, butting Facey backward downstairs and putting his shoulder out. Leather had long tried for sixpence a week extra for this service, but had not succeeded in getting it.

IV
T HE B RIGHT I DEA
    L ONDON WAS VERY EMPTY. THERE were as many waiters as guests at the Carlton, and White’s was equally deserted. A man might walk a long time before he would be hailed,—a very long time before anybody would ask him to dine.
    Mr Facey Romford