says your wife over your shoulder.
I kiss your ladyship's hand. I am dumb. The Bernstein is a model of
virtue. She had no good reasons for marrying her father's chaplain.
Many of the nobility omit the marriage altogether. She wasn't ashamed
of being Mrs. Tusher, and didn't take a German Baroncino for a second
husband, whom nobody out of Hanover ever saw. The Yarmouth bears no
malice. Esther and Vashti are very good friends, and have been cheating
each other at Tunbridge at cards all the summer.

"'And what has all this to do with the Iroquois?' says your ladyship.
The Iroquois has been at Tunbridge, too--not cheating, perhaps, but
winning vastly. They say he has bled Lord March of thousands--Lord
March, by whom so much blood hath been shed, that he has quarrelled with
everybody, fought with everybody, rode over everybody, been fallen in
love with by everybody's wife except Mr. Conway's, and not excepting her
present Majesty, the Countess of England, Scotland, France and Ireland,
Queen of Walmoden and Yarmouth, whom Heaven preserve to us.

"You know an offensive little creature, de par le monde, one Jack
Morris, who skips in and out of all the houses of London. When we were
at Vauxhall, Mr. Jack gave us a nod under the shoulder of a pretty young
fellow enough, on whose arm he was leaning, and who appeared hugely
delighted with the enchantments of the garden. Lord, how he stared
at the fireworks! Gods, how he huzzayed at the singing of a horrible
painted wench who shrieked the ears off my head! A twopenny string of
glass beads and a strip of tawdry cloth are treasures in Iroquois-land,
and our savage valued them accordingly.

"A buzz went about the place that this was the fortunate youth. He won
three hundred at White's last night very genteelly from Rockingham and
my precious nephew, and here he was bellowing and huzzaying over the
music so as to do you good to hear. I do not love a puppet-show, but I
love to treat children to one, Miss Conway! I present your ladyship my
compliments, and hope we shall go and see the dolls together.

"When the singing woman came down from her throne, Jack Morris must
introduce my Virginian to her. I saw him blush up to the eyes, and make
her, upon my word, a very fine bow, such as I had no idea was practised
in wigwams. 'There is a certain jenny squaw about her, and that's why
the savage likes her,' George said--a joke certainly not as brilliant as
a firework. After which it seemed to