An Account of Captain Weazel and His Lady
During the morning and afternoon, Captain Weazel entertains the company with accounts of his supposed valor, including knocking down a soldier who mocked him, tweaking a drawer’s nose for criticizing his use of a fork, and challenging a cheesemonger rival. Mrs. Weazel confirms all his stories, adding a tale about receiving a love letter from Squire Gobble and falling ill from eating ortolans while her lord noticed her altered complexion. The captain recounts how he made a witty repartee about Lord Diddle’s remark that Mrs. Weazel was breeding. Walking with Joey in the afternoon, the narrator learns from the driver that Miss Jenny is a common prostitute who fell in with a recruiting officer, was abandoned in Newcastle when he was arrested for debt, and now travels by waggon. Joey further reveals that one of the strangers’ servants recognized Captain Weazel as having served Lord Frizzle as valet-de-chambre until his lady insisted both Weazel and his mistress be dismissed. To reconcile them gracefully, his lordship arranged for Weazel to marry his mistress and secured him an ensign’s commission in the army. Recognizing they share the same low opinion of the captain’s courage, Joey proposes testing it with a fake highwayman alarm.
The Captain’s Courage Tried
As dusk falls, Joey alerts the waggon to the approaching horseman he suspects might be a highwayman. A general consternation erupts: Strap leaps from the waggon and hides behind a hedge, the usurer rustles suspiciously in the straw, Mrs. Weazel wrings her hands with lamentation, and the captain astonishingly begins to snore. Miss Jenny shakes him awake, calling him a coward and ordering him to behave like a soldier. Weazel pretends anger at being disturbed and swears he will have his nap regardless of highwaymen, though he trembles so violently the carriage shakes. Enraged at his cowardice, Miss Jenny leaps out to defend them herself. The horseman, actually a friend of Joey’s in on the scheme, approaches and demands to know who is inside. Isaac pleas for mercy, Mrs. Weazel claims to be a sorrowful wife, and when asked about her husband, she explains he was left sick at the last inn. The stranger then claims to smell a befouled lapdog and seizes Weazel’s leg, dragging him from under his wife’s petticoats where he had hidden. The exposed captain rubs his eyes, pretends to wake from sleep, and the stranger departs with mocking farewell.
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