CHAPTER II

OUR HEROINE

WELL, this famous Comet year brought to Roseberry Rocks, along with many thousand other visitors who have not been fortunate enough to secure the services of an historian, the young and lovely Miss McDermott, on what the lawyers would call a sort of general issue expedition, ere she took the irrevocable two pound twelve and sixpence worth along with young Jasper Goldspink, the banker’s son of the pretty agricultural town of Mayfield in C——shire, with whom she had grown up in a sort of neighbourly intimacy that would most likely have ended in a common matter-of-course match but for the incidents disclosed in the ensuing chapters. Mrs. McDermott, who of course was exceedingly disinterested and unworldly—at the same time not altogether opposed to either rank or wealth—thought she would only be doing Rosa justice by letting her see a little of the world; accordingly, under pretence of getting their pretty mansion of Privett Grove painted, she availed herself of the emancipating influence of railways, and arrived with their first-class clothes in a first-class train at this our first-class watering-place, instead of going to the little fishing town of Herringshoal Sands hard by.

Rosa was then just in the full bloom of womanhood, of medium height, plump and fair, with a calm, somewhat pensive, “Eugénie” expression of countenance that grew upon the beholder. If her perhaps rather prematurely developed form suggested a year or two more to her age than she really deserved, it was amply compensated for by the juvenile looks of Mamma, who, like most fair ladies, had worn wonderfully well. There is nothing so appalling as a great fat mother-in-law.

One of the great drawbacks of locomotion—especially where unprotected females are concerned—undoubtedly is the fleecing the travellers undergo at the hands of the hotel keepers ere they get settled down in a house, and the general evil was aggravated in this particular case by our fair friends—strangers to the place—alighting at Chousey’s Hotel, so famous for charges, though “off particular times,” be it remembered, as the advertisements say, as reasonable as any of its class. Unfortunately for its inmates, however, those particular times can never be hit upon, for Chousey seems to make out his bills by the almanac, and it must be an uncommonly queer day to which some particular incident does not attach. Chousey, however, carries things off with such a high hand, such an elegant air, that it is almost a pleasure to be imposed upon by him. Having been a nobleman’s valet, he is always obliging enough to assume the possession of titles by his guests, and whenever he condescends to leave his guitar in his wife’s boudoir to attend a summons to justify charges, he throws himself into attitude, exhibiting a perfect blaze of jewelry, and, running his beringed hand through his well-waxed ringlets, lisps out with the most perfect composure, “True, my lord,” or “True, my lady,” as the case may be; “these charges do ’pear rayther high at first glance, but p’raps your lordship (or your ladyship) has forgotten that yesterday was the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, and to-day is the day on which the Magna Charta was signed, and of course we are obleged to make a little difference; ‘at other times’ I believe I may say our charges are as reasonable as can be.” Our travellers happened to arrive on the anniversary of the day on which the Malakoff was taken, and staying over that of the fall of Sebastopol were charged half a crown a head for bread-and-butter teas, three and sixpence for breakfasts, six shillings for mutton-chop dinners, lights and apartments in proportion—all very surprising to housekeepers who know the prime cost of the articles. We need not say that our friends did not stay there any longer than they could help.