“On business?”
“No. No business. He was only sauntering by and stopped to prose.”
“I thought it was Snagsby,” says Mr. Guppy, “and thought it as well that he shouldn’t see me, so I waited till he was gone.”
“There we go again, William G.!” cried Tony, looking up for an instant. “So mysterious and secret! By George, if we were going to commit a murder, we couldn’t have more mystery about it!”
Mr. Guppy affects to smile, and with the view of changing the conversation, looks with an admiration, real or pretended, round the room at the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty, terminating his survey with the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the mantelshelf, in which she is represented on a terrace, with a pedestal upon the terrace, and a vase upon the pedestal, and her shawl upon the vase, and a prodigious piece of fur upon the shawl, and her arm on the prodigious piece of fur, and a bracelet on her arm.
“That’s very like Lady Dedlock,” says Mr. Guppy. “It’s a speaking likeness.”
“I wish it was,” growls Tony, without changing his position. “I should have some fashionable conversation, here, then.”
Finding by this time that his friend is not to be wheedled into a more sociable humour, Mr. Guppy puts about upon the ill-used tack and remonstrates with him.
“Tony,” says he, “I can make allowances for lowness of spirits, for no man knows what it is when it does come upon a man better than I do, and no man perhaps has a better right to know it than a man who has an unrequited image imprinted on his ’eart. But there are bounds to these things when an unoffending party is in question, and I will acknowledge to you, Tony, that I don’t think your manner on the present occasion is hospitable or quite gentlemanly.”
“This is strong language, William Guppy,” returns Mr. Weevle.