CHAPTER II.
In which Miss Prior is kept at the Door.
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Of course we all
know who she was,
the Miss Prior of
Shrublands, whom
papa and grandmamma
called to
the unruly children.
Years had
passed since I had
shaken the Beak
Street dust off my
feet. The brass
plate of "Prior"
was removed from
the once familiar
door, and screwed,
for what I can tell,
on to the late reprobate
owner's
coffin. A little
eruption of mushroom-formed
brass
knobs I saw on the
door-post when I
passed by it last
week, and Café
des Ambassadeurs
was thereon inscribed, with three fly-blown blue teacups, a couple of
coffee-pots of the well-known Britannia metal, and two freckled copies of
the Indépendance Belge hanging over the window blind. Were those
their Excellencies the Ambassadors at the door, smoking cheroots?
Pool and Billiards were written on their countenances, their hats, their
elbows. They may have been ambassadors down on their luck, as the
phrase is. They were in disgrace, no doubt, at the court of her imperial
majesty Queen Fortune. Men as shabby have retrieved their disgraces
ere now, washed their cloudy faces, strapped their dingy waistcoats with
cordons, and stepped into fine carriages from quarters not a whit more
