I humbly beg the pardon of Mademoiselle Sophonisba!

CHAPTER V.

THE COCKAYNE FAMILY.

The Cockaynes deserve a few words of formal introduction to the reader, since he is destined to make their better acquaintance.  We have ventured hitherto only to take a few discreet and distant glimpses at them, as we found them loitering about the Boulevards on the morrow of their appearance in Paris.  Mr. Cockayne—­having been very successful for many years in the soap-boiling business, to the great discomfort and vexation of the noses of his neighbours, and having amassed fortune enough to keep himself and wife and his three blooming daughters among the creme de la creme of Clapham, and in the list of the elect of society, known as carriage-people—­he had given up the soap-boiling to his two sons, and had made up his mind to enjoy his money, or rather so much of it as Mrs. Cockayne might not require.  It is true that every shilling of the money had been made by Cockayne, that every penny-piece represented a bit of soap which he had manufactured for the better cleansing of his generation.  But this highly honourable fact, to the credit of poor Cockayne, albeit it was unpleasant to the nostrils of Mrs. C. when she had skimmed some of the richest of the Clapham creme into her drawing-room, did not abate her resolve to put at least three farthings of the penny into her pocket, for her uses and those of her simple and innocent daughters.  Mrs. Cockayne, being an economical woman, spent more money on herself, her house, and her children than any lady within a mile of Cockayne House.  It is certain that she was an excellent mother to her three daughters, for she reminded Cockayne every night regularly—­as regularly, he said, as he took his socks off—­that if it were not for her, she did not know what would become of the children.  She was quite sure their father wouldn’t trouble his head about them.

Perhaps Mrs. Cockayne was right.  Cockayne had slaved in business only thirty-five years out of the fifty-two he had passed in this vale of tears, and had only lodged her at last in a brougham and pair.  He might have kept in harness another ten years, and set her up in a carriage and four.  She was sure he didn’t know what to do with himself, now he had retired.  He was much better tempered when he went off to business by the nine o’clock omnibus every morning; and before he had given himself such ridiculous airs, and put himself on all kinds of committees he didn’t understand anything about, and taken to make himself disagreeable to his neighbours in the vestry-hall, and moving what he called amendments and riders, for the mere pleasure, she verily believed, of opposing somebody, as he did everybody in his own house, and of hearing himself talk.  Does the reader perceive by this time the kind of lady Mrs. Cockayne was, and what a comfort she must have been to her husband in the autumn of his life?