Here 'Melia Jane burst out blubbering so violently that she had to be conducted from the room. Mr. Linton concluded the song, however; but the applause which attended his effort was rather faint, and Kiss found it necessary to explain that the lines were really only nonsense lines. He himself soon restored the equilibrium by a sweet rendering of "Sally in our Alley"; and then followed other songs, by Phœbe and Fanny, and an old-fashioned duet by Aunt and Uncle Leth. Then there was a little bit of supper, at which Uncle Leth proposed the toast of "Success to Mr. Linton's delightful play," to which the author responded in feeling terms, and spoke of the happy evening he had spent. After actor and author were gone, Phœbe and the Lethbridges stopped up for an hour talking over the incidents of this remarkable night; but Uncle Leth said nothing of the bill for three hundred pounds to which he had put his name.
CHAPTER XIII.
CURL-PAPER CONFIDENCES.
When two young women are closeted in their bedchamber after a pleasant day, and preparing for repose, then is the time for the interchange of sacred confidences. The events of the last few hours are touched upon with significant emphasis, the gentlemen are discussed and judged, and their personal peculiarities and excellencies commented upon with approval or otherwise. However quiet, demure, and comparatively unobservant the young ladies may have been, depend upon it not the smallest detail of the gentlemen's dress and manners has escaped their penetrating eyes. Especially is this the case upon the occasion of the introduction of a new male acquaintance. Everything appertaining to him is recalled, from the parting of his hair to the tying of his shoestrings. It would much astonish him to hear the pretty girls (all girls are pretty in their spring-time), who seemed to scarcely have courage to glance at him, speak of the colour of his eyes, of the cut of his clothes, of the quality of his moustache, of the size of his hands and feet, and the shape of his finger-nails. No learned judge in his summing up was ever so precise and correct, and the beauty or the despair of it is that these gossiping damsels are not only judges but juries, from whose verdict there is absolutely no appeal. Of course such sacred confidences are all the more interesting when the subjects for dissection are young unmarried men.
Many such conversations had Phœbe and Fanny held, and now, according to their wont, they proceeded to discuss the incidents of the evening, as they made their preparations for bed.
"I have often thought it a pity," said Phœbe, "that Mr. Kiss is not married."
"It is a pity," assented Fanny; "he is so good-natured and jolly that he deserves a good wife."
"And so clever," remarked Phœbe.
"And so good-looking. Phœbe, depend upon it, he has been crossed in love."