street round the corner, that he might have the satisfaction of saying they were his
neighbours.
In short, with Miss Tox and the blue-faced Major, it was enough for Princess's Place - as
with a very small fragment of society, it is enough for many a little hanger-on of another
sort - to be well connected, and to have genteel blood in its veins. It might be poor,
mean, shabby, stupid, dull. No matter. The great street round the corner trailed off into
Princess's Place; and that which of High Holborn would have become a choleric word,
spoken of Princess's Place became flat blasphemy.
The dingy tenement inhabited by Miss Tox was her own; having been devised and
bequeathed to her by the deceased owner of the fishy eye in the locket, of whom a
miniature portrait, with a powdered head and a pigtail, balanced the kettle-holder on
opposite sides of the parlour fireplace. The greater part of the furniture was of the
powdered-head and pig-tail period: comprising a plate-warmer, always languishing and
sprawling its four attenuated bow legs in somebody's way; and an obsolete harpsichord,
illuminated round the maker's name with a painted garland of sweet peas. In any part of
the house, visitors were usually cognizant of a prevailing mustiness; and in warm
weather Miss Tox had been seen apparently writing in sundry chinks and crevices of the
wainscoat with the the wrong end of a pen dipped in spirits of turpentine.
Although Major Bagstock had arrived at what is called in polite literature, the grand
meridian of life, and was proceeding on his journey downhill with hardly any throat, and
a very rigid pair of jaw-bones, and long-flapped elephantine ears, and his eyes and
complexion in the state of artificial excitement already mentioned, he was mightily proud
of awakening an interest in Miss Tox, and tickled his vanity with the fiction that she was
a splendid woman who had her eye on him. This he had several times hinted at the
club: in connexion with little jocularities, of which old Joe Bagstock, old Joey Bagstock,
old J. Bagstock, old Josh Bagstock, or so forth, was the perpetual theme: it being, as it
were, the Major's stronghold and donjon-keep of light humour, to be on the most familiar
terms with his own name.
'Joey B., Sir,'the Major would say, with a flourish of his walking-stick, 'is worth a dozen
of you. If you had a few more of the Bagstock breed among you, Sir, you'd be none the
worse for it. Old Joe, Sir, needn't look far for a wile even now, if he was on the look-out;
but he's hard-hearted, Sir, is Joe - he's tough, Sir, tough, and de-vilish sly!' After such a
declaration, wheezing sounds would be heard; and the Major's blue would deepen into
purple, while his eyes strained and started convulsively.
Notwithstanding his very liberal laudation of himself, however, the Major was selfish. It
may be doubted whether there ever was a more entirely selfish person at heart; or at
stomach is perhaps a better expression, seeing that he was more decidedly endowed
with that latter organ than with the former. He had no idea of being overlooked or
slighted by anybody; least of all, had he the remotest comprehension of being
overlooked and slighted by Miss Tox.
