A violent uproar now recalled my attention to Number 29, where the mob had begun to call out to Miss Winter for her Northern Lights. Miss W. was at her post, and rushed with her rush to comply with the demand; but a sudden twitter of nervousness aggravating her old palsy, she could not persuade her wavering taper to alight on any one of the cottons. There was a deal of coquetting indeed between wick and wick, but nothing like a mutual flame. In vain the thin lover-like candle kept hovering over its intended, and shedding tears of grease at every repulse; not a glimmer replied to its glance, till at last, weary of love and light, it fairly leaped out of its tin socket, and drowned its own twinkle in a tall jelly-glass. The patience of the mob, already of a thin texture, was torn to rags by this conclusion; they saw that if she would, Miss Winter never _could_ illuminate: but as this was an unwelcome truth, they broke it to her with a volley of stones that destroyed her little Vauxhall in a moment, and in a twinkle left her nothing to twinkle with!
Shocked at this catastrophe, I turned with some anxiety to Miss Rumbold’s, but with admirable presence of mind she had lighted every alternate candle in her windows, and was thus able to present a respectable front at a short notice. The mob, however, made as much uproar as at Miss Winter’s, though the noise was different in character, and more resembled the boisterous merriment which attends upon Punch. In fact Miss Rumbold had a Fantoccini over head she little dreamt of. Awakened by the unusual light, the younger Rumbolds had rushed from bed to the window, where, exhilarated by childish spirits and the appearance of a gala, they had got up an extempore Juvenile Ball, and were dancing with all their might in their little nightcaps and nightgowns. In vain the unconscious Matilda pointed to her candles, and added her own private pair from the table to the centre window; in vain she wrung her hands, or squeezed them on her bosom: the more she protested in dumb show, the more the mob shouted; and the more the mob shouted, the wilder the imps jigged about. At last Matilda seemed to take some hint; she vanished from the drawing-room like a Ghost, and reappeared like a Fury in the nursery--a pair of large hands vigorously flourished and flogged--the heels of the Corps de Ballet flew up higher than their heads--the mob shouted louder than ever--and exeunt omnes.