And therefore I hope, my dear, you'll not allowing was, that the person glared at could not by yourself to be greatly disappointed." "George!" said Miss Lavvy, in a sepulchral, warning voice, founded on her mother's -"George Sampson, speak! What did I tell you about those Boffins ?" any means successfully pretend to be ignorant of the fact; so that a by-stander, without beholding Mrs. Wilfer at all, must have known at whom she was glaring, by seeing her refracted from the countenance of the beglared one. Miss Lavinia was extremely affable to Mr. Sampson on this special occasion, and took the opportunity of informing her sister why. "It was not worth troubling you about, Bel Mr. Sampson, perceiving his frail bark to be laboring among shoals and breakers, thought it safest not to refer back to any particular thing that he had been told, lest he should refer back to the wrong thing. With admirable seaman-la, when you were in a sphere so far removed ship he got his bark into deep water by murmuring, "Yes, indeed." "Yes! I told George Sampson, as George Sampson tells you," said Miss Lavvy, "that those hateful Boffins would pick a quarrel with Bella as soon as her novelty had worn off. Have they done it, or have they not? Was I right, or was I wrong? And what do you say to us, Bella, of your Boffins now?" "Lavvy and Ma," said Bella, "I say of Mr. and Mrs. Boffin what I always have said; and I always shall say of them what I always have said. But nothing will induce me to quarrel with any one to-night. I hope you are not sorry to see me, Ma dear," kissing her; "and I hope you are not sorry to see me, Lavvy," kissing her too; "and as I notice the lettuce Ma mentioned on the table, I'll make the salad." Bella playfully setting herself about the task, Mrs. Wilfer's impressive countenance followed her with glaring eyes, presenting a combination of the once popular sign of the Saracen's Head, with a piece of Dutch clock-work, and suggesting to an imaginative mind that from the composition of the salad her daughter might prudently omit the vinegar. But no word issued from the majestic matron's lips. And this was more terrific to her husband (as perhaps she knew) than any flow of eloquence with which she could have edified the company. from your family as to make it a matter in which you could be expected to take very little interest," said Lavinia with a toss of her chin; "but George Sampson is paying his addresses to me." Bella was glad to hear it. Mr. Sampson became thoughtfully red, and felt called upon to encircle Miss Lavinia's waist with his arm; but, encountering a large pin in the young lady's belt, scarified a finger, uttered a sharp exclamation, and attracted the lightning of Mrs. Wilfer's glare. "George is getting on very well," said Miss Lavinia-which might not have been supposed at the moment-" and I dare say we shall be married one of these days. I didn't care to mention it when you were with your Bof—” here Miss Lavinia checked herself in a bounce, and added more placidly, "when you were with Mr. and Mrs. Boffin; but now I think it sisterly to name the circumstance." "Thank you, Lavvy dear. I congratulate you." "Thank you, Bella. The truth is, George and I did discuss whether I should tell you; but I said to George that you wouldn't be much interested in so paltry an affair, and that it was far more likely you would rather detach yourself from us altogether, than have him added to the rest of us." "That was a mistake, dear Lavvy," said Bella. "Now, Ma dear," said Bella in due course, "the salad's ready, and it's past supper-time." "It turns out to be," replied Miss Lavinia; Mrs. Wilfer rose, but remained speechless."but circumstances have changed, you know, "George!" said Miss Lavinia, in her voice of warning, "Ma's chair!" Mr. Sampson flew to the excellent lady's back, and followed her up close, chair in hand, as she stalked to the banquet. Arrived at the table, she took her rigid seat, after favoring Mr. Sampson with a glare for himself, which caused the young gentleman to retire to his place in much confusion. The cherub not presuming to address so tremendous an object, transacted her supper through the agency of a third person, as "Mutton to your Ma, Bella, my dear;" and "Lavvy, I dare say your Ma would take some lettuce if you were to put it on her plate. Mrs. Wilfer's manner of receiving those viands was marked by petrified absence of mind; in which state, likewise, she partook of them, occasionally laying down her knife and fork, and saying within her own spirit, "What is this I am doing?" and glaring at one or other of the party, as if in indignant search of information. A magnetic result of such glar my dear. George is in a new situation, and his prospects are very good indeed. I shouldn't have had the courage to tell you so yesterday, when you would have thought his prospects poor, and not worth notice; but I feel quite bold to-night." "When did you begin to feel timid, Lavvy?" inquired Bella, with a smile. "I didn't say that I ever felt timid, Bella," replied the Irrepressible. "But perhaps I might have said, if I had not been restrained by delicacy toward a sister's feelings, that I have for some time felt independent; too independent, my dear, to subject myself to have my intended match (you'll prick yourself again, George) looked down upon. It is not that I could have blamed you for looking down upon it, when you were looking up to a rich and great match, Bella; it is only that I was independent." Whether the Irrepressible felt slighted by Bella's declaration that she would not quarrel, or whether her spitefulness was evoked by Bella's grandmamma, if so addressed by one of her daughters, at any age, would have insisted on her retiring to a dark apartment." "My grandmamma," returned Lavvy, folding her arms and leaning back in her chair, "wouldn't have sat staring people out of countenance, I think." "She would," said Mrs. Wilfer. "Then it's a pity she didn't know better," said Lavvy. "And if my grandmamma wasn't in "Ma, pray don't sit staring at me in that intensely aggravating manner! If you see a black on my nose, tell me so; if you don't, leave me alone." "Do you address Me in those words ?" said her dotage when she took to insisting on people's Mrs. Wilfer. "Do you presume?" "Don't talk about presuming, Ma, for goodness' sake. A girl who is old enough to be engaged, is quite old enough to object to be stared at as if she was a Clock." retiring to dark apartments, she ought to have been. A pretty exhibition my grandmamma must have made of herself! I wonder whether she ever insisted on people's retiring into the ball of St. Paul's; and if she did, how she got them "Audacious one!" said Mrs. Wilfer. "Your there!" "Silence!" proclaimed Mrs. Wilfer. "I Would you prize that remembrance of the dear command silence!" creature?" "I have not the slightest intention of being silent, Ma," returned Lavinia, coolly, "but quite the contrary. I am not going to be eyed as if I had come from the Boffins, and sit silent under it. I am not going to have George Sampson eyed as if he had come from the Boffins, and sit silent under it. If Pa thinks proper to be eyed as if he had come from the Boffins also, well and good. I don't choose to. And I won't!" "Yes, my precious." "Then you shall have it if you're good, Sir. I am very, very sorry, dearest Pa, to have brought home all this trouble." "My pet," returned her father, in the simplest good faith, "don't make yourself uneasy about that. It really is not worth mentioning, because things at home would have taken pretty much the same turn any way. If your mother and sister don't find one subject to get at times a little wearing on, they find another. We're never out of a wearing subject, my dear, I assure you. I am afraid you find your old room with Lavvy dreadfully inconvenient, Bella ?" Lavinia's engineering having made this crooked opening at Bella, Mrs. Wilfer strode into it. "You rebellious spirit! You mutinous child! Tell me this, Lavinia. If, in violation of your mother's sentiments, you had condescended to allow yourself to be patronized by the Boffins, and if you had come from those halls of slavery-" "That's mere nonsense, Ma," said Lavinia. "How!" exclaimed Mrs. Wilfer, with sub-when it wasn't such a contrast as it must be now. lime severity. Upon my word, I can only answer, because you are so much improved." "Halls of slavery, Ma, is mere stuff and nonsense," returned the unmoved Irrepressible. "I say, presumptuous child, if you had come from the neighborhood of Portland Place, bending under the yoke of patronage and attended by its domestics in glittering garb to visit me, do you think my deep-seated feelings could have been expressed in looks?" "All I think about it is," returned Lavinia, "that I should wish them expressed to the right person." "And if," pursued her mother, "if making light of my warnings that the face of Mrs. Boffin alone was a face teeming with evil, you had clung to Mrs. Boffin instead of to me, and had after all come home rejected by Mrs. Boffin, trampled under foot by Mrs. Boffin, and cast out by Mrs. Boffin, do you think my feelings could have been expressed in looks ?" Lavinia was about replying to her honored parent that she might as well have dispensed with her looks altogether then, when Bella rose and said, "Good-night, dear Ma. I have had a tiring day, and I'll go to bed." This broke up the agreeable party. Mr. George Sampson shortly afterward took his leave, accompanied by Miss Lavinia with a candle as far as the hall, and without a candle as far as the garden-gate; Mrs. Wilfer, washing her hands of the Boffins, went to bed after the manner of Lady Macbeth; and R. W. was left alone among the dilapidations of the supper-table, in a melancholy attitude. But a light footstep roused him from his meditations, and it was Bella's. Her pretty hair was hanging all about her, and she had tripped down softly, brush in hand, and barefoot, to say good-night to him. "My dear, you most unquestionably are a lovely woman," said the cherub, taking up a tress in his hand. "Look here, Sir," said Bella; "when your lovely woman marries, you shall have that piece if you like, and she'll make you a chain of it. VOL. XXXI.-No 183.-C c "No I don't, Pa; I don't mind. Why don't I mind, do you think, Pa?" "Well, my child, you used to complain of it "No, Pa. Because I am so thankful and so happy!" Here she choked him until her long hair made him sneeze, and then she laughed until she made him laugh, and then she choked him again that they might not be overheard. "Listen, Sir," said Bella. "Your lovely woman was told her fortune to-night on her way home. It won't be a large fortune, because if the lovely woman's Intended gets a certain appointment that he hopes to get soon, she will marry on a hundred and fifty pounds a year. But that's at first, and even if it should never be more, the lovely woman will make it quite enough. But that's not all, Sir. In the fortune there's a certain fair man—a little man, the fortune-teller said—who, it seems, will always find himself near the lovely woman, and will always have kept, expressly for him, such a peaceful corner in the lovely woman's little house as never was. Tell me the name of that man, Sir." "Is he a Knave in the pack of cards?" inquired the cherub, with a twinkle in his eyes. "Yes!" cried Bella, in high glee, choking him again. "He's the Knave of Wilfers! Dear Pa, the lovely woman means to look forward to this fortune that has been told for her, so delightfully, and to cause it to make her a much better lovely woman than she ever has been yet. What the little fair man is expected to do, Sir, is to look forward to it also, by saying to himself when he is in danger of being over-worried, 'I see land at last!'" "I see land at last!" repeated her father. "There's a dear Knave of Wilfers!" exclaimed Bella; then putting out her small white bare foot, "That's the mark, Sir. Come to the mark. Put your boot against it. We keep to it together, mind! Now, Sir, you may kiss the lovely woman before she runs away, so thankful and so happy. O yes, fair little man, so thankful and so happy!" CHAPTER XVII. A SOCIAL CHORUS. show, and when I, Podsnap, casually remark elsewhere that I dined last Monday with a gorgeous caravan of camels, I find it personally offensive to have it hinted to me that they are brokenkneed camels, or camels laboring under sus myself, I am above them; I am a more solid man; but these camels have basked in the light of my countenance, and how dare you, Sir, insinuate to me that I have irradiated any but unimpeachable camels ?" AMAZEMENT sits enthroned upon the countenances of Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Lammle's circle of acquaintance, when the disposal of their first-picion of any sort. "I don't display camels class furniture and effects (including a Billiard Table in capital letters), "by auction, under a bill of sale," is publicly announced on a waving hearth-rug in Sackville Street. But nobody is half so much amazed as Hamilton Veneering, Esquire, M.P. for Pocket Breaches, who instantly begins to find out that the Lammles are the only people ever entered on his soul's register who are not the oldest and dearest friends he has in the world. Mrs. Veneering, W.M.P. for Pocket Breaches, like a faithful wife shares her husband's discovery and inexpressible astonishment. Perhaps the Veneerings twain may deem the last unutterable feeling particularly due to their reputation, by reason that once upon a time some of the longer heads in the City are whispered to have shaken themselves, when Veneering's extensive dealings and great wealth were mentioned. But it is certain that neither Mr. nor Mrs. Veneering can find words to won der in, and it becomes necessary that they give to the oldest and dearest friends they have in the world a wondering dinner. For it is by this time noticeable that, whatever befalls, the Veneerings must give a dinner upon it. Lady Tippins lives in a chronic state of invitation to dine with the Veneerings, and in a chronic state of inflammation arising from the dinners. Boots and Brewer go about in cabs, with no other intelligible business on earth than to beat up people to come and dine with the Veneerings. Veneering pervades the legislative 'lobbies, intent upon entrapping his fellow-legislators to dinner. Mrs. Veneering dined with five-and-twenty bran-new faces overnight; calls upon them all to-day; sends them every one a dinner-card to-morrow, for the week after next before that dinner is digested, calls upon their brothers and sisters, their sons and daughters, their nephews and nieces, their aunts and uncles and cousins, and invites them all to dinner. And still, as at first, howsoever, the dining circle widens, it is to be observed that all the diners are consistent in appearing to go to the Veneerings, not to dine with Mr. and Mrs. Veneering (which would seem to be the last thing in their minds), but to dine with one another. Perhaps, after all-who knows?-Veneering may find this dining, though expensive, remunerative, in the sense that it makes champions. Mr. Podsnap, as a representative man, is not alone in caring very particularly for his own dignity, if not for that of his acquaintances, and therefore in angrily supporting the acquaintances who have taken out his Permit, lest, in their being lessened, he should be. The gold and silver camels, and the ice-pails, and the rest of the Veneering table decorations, make a brilliant The camels are polishing up in the Analytical's pantry for the dinner of wonderment on the occasion of the Lammles going to pieces, and Mr. Twemlow feels a little queer on the sofa at his lodgings over the stable yard in Duke Street, Saint James's, in consequence of having taken two advertised pills at about midday, on the faith of the printed representation accompanying the box (price one and a penny half-penny, government stamp included), that the same "will be found highly salutary as a precautionary measure in connection with the pleasures of the table." To whom, while sickly with the fancy of an insoluble pill sticking in his gullet, and also with the sensation of a deposit of warm gum languidly wandering within him a little lower down, a servant enters with the announcement that a lady wishes to speak with him. "A lady!" says Twemlow, pluming his ruffled feathers. "Ask the favor of the lady's name." The lady's name is Lammle. The lady will not detain Mr. Twemlow longer than a very few minutes. The lady is sure that Mr. Twemlow will do her the kindness to see her, on being told that she particularly desires a short interview. The lady has no doubt whatever of Mr. Twemlow's compliance when he hears her name. Has begged the servant to be particular not to mistake her name. Would have sent in a card, but has none. in. "Show the lady in." Lady shown in, comes Mr. Twemlow's little rooms are modestly furnished, in an old-fashioned manner (rather like the housekeeper's room at Snigsworthy Park), and would be bare of mere ornament were it not for a full-length engraving of the sublime Snigsworth over the chimney-piece, snorting at a Corinthian column, with an enormous roll of paper at his feet, and a heavy curtain going to tumble down on his head; those accessories being understood to represent the noble lord as somehow in the act of saving his country. "Pray take a seat, Mrs. Lammle." Mrs. Lammle takes a seat and opens the conversation. "I have no doubt, Mr. Twemlow, that you have heard of a reverse of fortune having be fallen us. Of course you have heard of it, for no kind of news travels so fast-among one's friends especially." Mindful of the wondering dinner, Twemlow, with a little twinge, admits the imputation. "Probably it will not," says Mrs. Lammle, with a certain hardened manner upon her, that makes Twemlow shrink, "have surprised you so much as some others, after what passed between us at the house which is now turned out at windows. I have taken the liberty of calling upon you, Mr. Twemlow, to add a sort of postscript to what I said that day." Mr. Twemlow's dry and hollow cheeks become more dry and hollow at the prospect of some new complication. "Really," says the uneasy little gentleman, “really, Mrs. Lammle, I should take it as a favor if you could excuse me from any further confidence. It has ever been one of the objects of my life-which, unfortunately, has not had many objects to be inoffensive, and to keep out of cabals and interferences." Mrs. Lammle, by far the more observant of the two, scarcely finds it necessary to look at Twemlow while he speaks, so easily does she read him. "My postscript to retain the term I have used"—says Mrs. Lammle, fixing her eyes on his face, to enforce what she says herself "coincides exactly with what you say, Mr. Twemlow. So far from troubling you with any new confidence, I merely wish to remind you what the old one was. So far from asking you for interference, I merely wish to claim your strict neutrality." Twemlow going on to reply, she rests her eyes again, knowing her ears to be quite enough for the contents of so weak a vessel. "I can, I suppose," says Twemlow, nervously, "offer no reasonable objection to hearing any thing that you do me the honor to wish to say to me under those heads. But if I may, with all possible delicacy and politeness, entreat you not to range beyond them, I-I beg to do so." "Sir," says Mrs. Lammle, raising her eyes to his face again, and quite daunting him with her hardened manner, "I imparted to you a certain piece of knowledge, to be imparted again, as you thought best, to a certain person." "Which I did," says Twemlow. "And for doing which, I thank you; though, indeed, I scarcely know why I turned traitress to my husband in the matter, for the girl is a poor little fool. I was a poor little fool once myself; I can find no better reason." Seeing the effect she produces on him by her indifferent laugh and cold look, she keeps her eyes upon him as she proceeds. "Mr. Twemlow, if you should chance to see my husband, or to see me, or to see both of us, in the favor or confidence of any one else-whether of our common acquaintance or not, is of no consequence-you have no right to use against us the knowledge I intrusted you with, for one special purpose which has been accomplished. This is what I came to say. It is not a stipulation; to a gentleman it is simply a reminder." Twemlow sits murmuring to himself with his hand to his forehead. "It is so plain a case," Mrs. Lammle goes on, "as between me (from the first relying on your honor) and you, that I will not waste another word upon it." She looks steadily at Mr. Twemlow, until, with a shrug, he makes her a little one-sided bow, as though saying "Yes, I think you have a right to rely upon me," and then she moistens her lips, and shows a sense of relief. "I trust I have kept the promise I made through your servant, that I would detain you a very few minutes. I need trouble you no longer, Mr. Twemlow." "Stay!" says Twemlow, rising as she rises. "Pardon me a moment. I should never have sought you out, madam, to say what I am going to say, but since you have sought me out and are here, I will throw it off my mind. Was it quite consistent, in candor, with our taking that resolution against Mr. Fledgeby, that you should afterward address Mr. Fledgeby as your dear and confidential friend, and entreat a favor of Mr. Fledgeby? Always supposing that you did; I assert no knowledge of my own on the subject; it has been represented to me that you did." "Then he told you?" retorts Mrs. Lammle, who again has saved her eyes while listening, and uses them with strong effect while speaking. "Yes." "It is strange that he should have told you the truth," says Mrs. Lammle, seriously pondering. "Pray where did a circumstance so very extraordinary happen?" Twemlow hesitates. He is shorter than the lady as well as weaker, and, as she stands above him with her hardened manner and her wellused eyes, he finds himself at such a disadvantage that he would like to be of the opposite sex. "May I ask where it happened, Mr. Twemlow? In strict confidence?" "I must confess," says the mild little gentleman, coming to his answer by degrees, "that I felt some compunctions when Mr. Fledgeby mentioned it. I must admit that I could not regard myself in an agreeable light. More particularly, as Mr. Fledgeby did, with great civility, which I could not feel that I deserved from him, render me the same service that you had entreated him to render you." It is a part of the true nobility of the poor gentleman's soul to say this last sentence. "Otherwise," he has reflected, "I shall assume the superior position of having no difficulties of my own, while I know of hers. Which would be mean, very mean." "Was Mr. Fledgeby's advocacy as effectual in your case as in ours?" Mrs. Lammle demands. "As ineffectual." "Can you make up your mind to tell me where you saw Mr. Fledgeby, Mr. Twemlow?" "I beg your pardon. I fully intended to have done so. The reservation was not intentional. |