"And whom do you think we shall meet? When I tell you, you will be as surprised as I was when I read it."
"Whom, Nicholas?" asked Mrs. Nuttall, impatiently. "Do not keep me in suspense."
"My brother Matthew!"
"Alive!" exclaimed Mrs. Nuttall.
"Of course. You would not wish to meet him in any other condition, would you?"
"That you should make such a remark," observed Mrs. Nuttall, "of a brother whom we all thought dead, is, to say the least of it, heartless, Nicholas. Of course, if the Blemishes are, as you say, great people, and he visits them, it is a comfort, as showing that his position is not a bad one. But, if we are to go, can you tell me what to wear? I don't know, in this outlandish colony, whether we are expected to dress ourselves like Christians or aboriginals."
"The last would certainly be inexpensive, but it would scarcely be decent, Maria," remarked Mr. Nuttall, slily.
"That may be very witty, Mr. Nuttall," responded his lady, loftily; "but it is hardly an observation a man should make to his own wife. Though for what you care about your wife's feelings I would not give that," and she snapped her fingers, disdainfully.
From long and sad experience, Mr. Nicholas Nuttall had learned the wisdom of saying as little as possible when his wife was in her present humour. Indeed, he would sometimes lose all consciousness of what was passing, or would find himself regarding it as an unquiet dream from which he would presently awake. But Mrs. Nuttall was always equal to the occasion; and now, as she observed him about to relapse into a dreamy state of inattention, she cried, sharply--
"Nicholas!"