The next day, Tom tries several times to see Mrs. Fitzgerald but gets nowhere. Fed up, he goes back to the Inn he’s staying at (a place Mr. Allworthy stayed at when in London). He hears an altercation and comes to intervene.
I was joking last week about how nice it was to see another fistfight again, and already we have a new one. They’re good for drama, I guess, and to make fast friends of whoever Tom comes to the rescue of (or vice versa). A footman was attacking his employer, and the daughter of the Innkeeper was standing by and screaming (this is what alerted Tom). As handily as the footman was beating his employer, so Tom took care of the footman.
It turns out—and you’ve gotta love this—the footman had been using his boss’s (Mr. Nightengale) copy of Hoyle and had spilled wine on an open page. Nightengale was angered, and the two started arguing over how much the book had been worth before getting ruined, so they could agree on how much to be withheld from his pay. One thing led to another…
Anyway, out of gratitude Nightengale splits a bottle of wine with Tom and they become friends, the innkeeper and her daughter join them and they all get along really well.
The next day, as masquerade invitation and mask arrive for Tom, he assumes this comes from Mrs. Fitzgerald and will be his chance to see Sophia. So he invites Nightengale to come to the ball with him—and then has to borrow cab fare from Partridge so he can afford to go anywhere. There’s no Sophia, or even Mrs. Fitzgerald at the ball, instead, it’s Sophia’s friend, Lady Bellaston, who arranged to meet Tom there.
She grills Tom for hours and finally agrees to arrange a meeting if he promises to leave Sophia alone after that. She gives him fifty pounds and sends him on his way.
Tom gets back to the inn to hear Mrs. Miller (the innkeeper, who I should’ve introduced earlier) talk about a cousin, who married for love and is now destitute and barely hanging on due to illness in the family. Tom pulls her aside and gives her the money Bellaston just gave him.
Now, earlier, Fielding told the reader that he focused on describing Mrs. Miller because she’s going to be important. I wonder how? And I look forward to finding out. A fun few chapters this week, I’m really enjoying Tom’s time in London.
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