"_Anxious_--to _thank me_! Are you really _serious_, Mr. Verney?" said Dingwell, lowering his cigar again, and looking with a stern smile in his visitor's face.
"Yes, sir; I _did_ wish to call and tell you," said Cleve, determined not to grow angry; "and I _am_ here to say that we are very much obliged."
"Oh, yes; well, it _is_ something. I hope the coronet becomes him, and his robes. I venture to say he has got up the masquerading properties already; it's a pity there isn't a coronation or something at hand; and I suppose he'll put up a monument to my dear friend Arthur--a mangy old dog he was, you'll allow me to say, though he was my friend, and very kind to me; and I, the most grateful fellow he ever met; I've been more grieved about him than any other person I can remember, upon my soul and honour--and a devilish dirty dog he was."
This last reflection was delivered in a melancholy aside, after the manner of a soliloquy, and Cleve did not exactly know how to take this old fellow's impertinence.
"Arthur Verney--poor fellow! your uncle. He had a great deal of the pride of his family, you know, along with utter degradation. Filthy dog!--pah!" And Mr. Dingwell lifted both his hands, and actually used that unpleasant utensil called a "spittoon," which is seen in taverns, to give expression, it seemed, to his disgust.
"But he had his pride, dear Arthur; he was proud, and wished for a tombstone. When he was dying, he said, 'I should like a monument--not of course in a cathedral, for I have been living so darkly, and a good deal talked about; but there's an old church or abbey near Malory (that I'm sure was the name of the place) where our family has been accustomed to bury its quiet respectabilities and its _mauvais sujets_; and I think they might give me a pretty little monument there, quite quietly.' I think you'll do it, for you're a grateful person, and like thinking people; and he certainly did a great deal for his family by going out of it, and the little vanity of a monument would not cost much, and, as he said himself, no one would ever see it; and I promised, if I ever had an opportunity, to mention the subject to your uncle."
"'And,' said he, 'there will be a little conflict of feeling. I am sure they'd like the _monument_, but they would not make an ostentation of _me_. But remind them of my Aunt Deborah. Poor old girl! she ran away with a fiddler.' Egad, sir! these were his very words, and I've found, on inquiring here, they were quite true. She ran away with a fiddler--egad! and I don't know how many little fiddlers she had; and, by Jove! he said if I came back I should recognise a possible cousin in every street-fiddler I met with, for music is a talent that runs in families. And so, when Atropos cut his fiddlestring, and he died, she took, he said, to selling mutton pies, for her maintenance, in Chester, and being properly proud as a Verney, though as a fiddler's widow necessitous, he said she used to cry, behind her little table, 'Hot mutton pies!' and then, _sotto voce_, 'I hope nobody hears me;' and you may rely upon that family anecdote, for I had it from the lips of that notorious member of your family, your uncle Arthur, and he hoped that they would comply with the tradition, and reconcile the Verney pride with Verney exigencies, and concede him the secret celebration of a monument."