All beastly Kammerherrs and Maids of Honour--abominable court
flunkeys. Tfui!"
He refers me to two strangers in a cafe as to two
flunkeys. He has thrown me out of the house, but I am going back into it, with the people of Paris behind me!"
A
flunkey handed him an uncut Times, which he proceeded to cut with a skill which betrayed familiarity with this delicate operation.
There were very common hacks, with father and mother and all the children in them; conspicuous little open carriages with celebrated ladies of questionable reputation in them; there were Dukes and Duchesses abroad, with gorgeous footmen perched behind, and equally gorgeous outriders perched on each of the six horses; there were blue and silver, and green and gold, and pink and black, and all sorts and descriptions of stunning and startling liveries out, and I almost yearned to be a
flunkey myself, for the sake of the fine clothes.
Indeed, it was such a thundering poor success that it raised wondering scowls all along the line, and a gorgeous
flunkey at the tail end of it raised his whip; but I jumped in time and was under it when it fell; and under cover of the volley of coarse laughter which fol- lowed, I spoke up sharply and warned the king to take no notice.
"Can you imagine," Ferfitchkin interrupted hotly and conceitedly, like some insolent
flunkey boasting of his master the General's decorations, "can you imagine that Zverkov will let us pay alone?
I've been in your counting-house more than once when Crimsworth has treated you like a dog; called for a book, for instance, and when you gave him the wrong one, or what he chose to consider the wrong one, flung it back almost in your face; desired you to shut or open the door as if you had been his
flunkey; to say nothing of your position at the party about a month ago, where you had neither place nor partner, but hovered about like a poor, shabby hanger-on; and how patient you were under each and all of these circumstances!"
I had nothing else to turn to, so I remained with him, and allowed myself to become his
flunkey. But by stinting myself in meat and drink I saved, during my five months of service, some seventy gulden; and one evening, when we were at Baden, I told him that I wished to resign my post, and then hastened to betake myself to roulette.
This good
flunkey, in spite of his conscientious scruples, really could not resist continuing such a very genteel and agreeable conversation.
There he had an opportunity of refreshing himself with both the bottles at once, looking out at a low blinding wall three feet off, and speculating on the number of Barnacle families within the bills of mortality who lived in such hutches of their own free
flunkey choice.
A peasant would run away, a fashionable dissenter would run away, the
flunkey of another man's thought, for you've only to show him the end of your little finger and he'll be ready to believe in anything for the rest of his life.
As I write today, SSGC
flunkeys are skulking around, there is water in the meter again and we still have no gas.