"My dear Sophy, I was only trying to show you how much I admired your spirit. I hope he'll marry Miss Hendy with all my heart."
When a conversation has got to this point, a chronicle of any pretensions to respectability will maintain a rigid silence; and we will therefore only observe, that by the time Mr William Whalley and Emily had come to Marlborough House, their conversation had arrived at a point where discretion becomes as indispensably a chronicler's duty as in the case of the other couple.
"Why should you go yet? There is no chance of your father being back from the city for hours to come."
"Oh! but we must get home. We have been out a long time." And so saying, she led the way up the steps by the Duke of York's column, followed by her sister and her swain--and attended at a respectful distance by a tall gentleman with an immense gold-headed walking-stick, displaying nether integuments of the brightest red, and white silk stockings of unexampled purity. The reader, if he had heard the various whispered allusions to different dishes, such as "sheep's head," "calf's foot jelly," "rhubarb tart," and "toasted cheese," would have been at no loss to recognise the indignant Daggles, whose culinary vocabulary it seemed impossible to exhaust. He followed, watching every motion of the happy couples. "Well, if this ain't too bad!--I've a great mind to tell old Pits how them disgusting saussingers runs after his mince-pies--meets 'em in the Park; gallivants with them under the trees as if they was ortolans and beccaficas; bills and coos with 'em as if they was real turtles and punch _à la Romaine_. How the old cucumber would flare up! Up Regent Street, along Oxford Street, through the square, up to our own door. Well, blowed if that ain't a good one! Into the very house they goes; up stairs to the drawing-room. O Lord! that there should be such impudence in beefsteaks and ingans! They couldn't be more audacious if they was Perigord pies."
Half an hour passed--an hour--and yet the conversation was flowing on as briskly as ever. Mr Bill Whalley had explained the exact difference between Norway and Canada timber, greatly to Miss Emily's satisfaction; and Miss Sophia had again and again expressed her determination to leave the house the moment Miss Hendy entered it; and both the young ladies had related the energetic language in which they had expressed this resolution to their father, and threatened him with immediate desertion if he didn't cut that horrid old schoolmistress at once. The same speeches about happiness and simple cottages, with peace and contentment, had been made a dozen time over by all parties, when the great clock in the hall--a Dutch pendule, inserted in a statue of Time--struck three o'clock, and at the same moment a loud rap was heard at the front door.