3)***


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Note: Project Gutenberg also has the other two volumes of this
      novel.
      Volume I: see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35428
      Volume II: see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35429


      Images of the original pages are available through
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      http://www.archive.org/details/charmingfellow03trol





A CHARMING FELLOW.

by

FRANCES ELEANOR TROLLOPE,

Author of "Aunt Margaret's Trouble," "Mabel's Progress," etc. etc.

In Three Volumes.

VOL. III.







London:
Chapman and Hall, 193, Piccadilly.
1876.

Charles Dickens and Evans,
Crystal Palace Press.




A CHARMING FELLOW.




CHAPTER I.


There was a "scene" that evening at Ivy Lodge--not the less a "scene" in
that it was conducted on genteel methods. Mrs. Algernon Errington
inflicted on her husband during dinner a recapitulation of all her
wrongs and injuries which could be covertly hinted at. She would not
broadly speak out her meaning before "the servants." The phrase shaped
itself thus in her mind from old habit. But in truth "the servants" were
represented by one plump-faced damsel in a yellow print gown, into which
her person seemed to have been inserted in the same way that bran is
inserted into the cover of a pincushion. She seemed to have been stuffed
into it by means of considerable force, and with less reference to the
natural shape of her body than to the arbitrary outlines of the case
made for it by a Whitford dressmaker.

This girl ministered to her master and mistress during dinner, pouring
water and wine, changing knives and plates, handing vegetables, and not
unfrequently dropping a spoon or a sprinkling of hot gravy into the laps
of her employers. She had succeeded to Slater, who resigned her post
after a trial of some six weeks' duration. Castalia, in despair at this
desertion, had written to Lady Seely to send her a maid from London
forthwith. But to this application she received a reply to the effect
that my lady could not undertake to find any one who would suit her
niece, and that her ladyship thought Castalia had much better make up
her mind to do without a regular lady's-maid, and take some humbler
attendant, who would make herself generally useful.

"I always knew Slater wouldn't stay with you," wrote Lady Seely; "and
you won't get any woman of that kind to stay. You can't afford to keep
one. Your uncle is fairly well; but poor Fido gives me a great deal of
unhappiness. He eats nothing