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.