“And as you’ve known me for a long time, you know,” said Mr Toots, “let me assure you that she is one of the most remarkable women that ever lived.”
“My dear!” remonstrated Mrs Toots.
“Upon my word and honour she is,” said Mr Toots. “I—I assure you, Mrs Blimber, she’s a most extraordinary woman.”
Mrs Toots laughed merrily, and Mrs Blimber led her to Cornelia. Mr Toots having paid his respects in that direction and having saluted his old preceptor, who said, in allusion to his conjugal state, “Well, Toots, well, Toots! So you are one of us, are you, Toots?”—retired with Mr Feeder, B.A., into a window.
Mr Feeder, B.A., being in great spirits, made a spar at Mr Toots, and tapped him skilfully with the back of his hand on the breastbone.
“Well, old Buck!” said Mr Feeder with a laugh. “Well! Here we are! Taken in and done for. Eh?”
“Feeder,” returned Mr Toots. “I give you joy. If you’re as—as—as perfectly blissful in a matrimonial life, as I am myself, you’ll have nothing to desire.”
“I don’t forget my old friends, you see,” said Mr Feeder. “I ask em to my wedding, Toots.”
“Feeder,” replied Mr Toots gravely, “the fact is, that there were several circumstances which prevented me from communicating with you until after my marriage had been solemnised. In the first place, I had made a perfect brute of myself to you, on the subject of Miss Dombey; and I felt that if you were asked to any wedding of mine, you would naturally expect that it was with Miss Dombey, which involved explanations, that upon my word and honour, at that crisis, would have knocked me completely over. In the second place, our wedding was strictly private; there being nobody present but one friend of myself and Mrs Toots’s, who is a Captain in—I don’t exactly know in what,” said Mr Toots, “but it’s of no consequence. I hope, Feeder, that in writing a statement of what had occurred before Mrs Toots and myself went abroad upon our foreign tour, I fully discharged the offices of friendship.”
“Toots, my boy,” said Mr Feeder, shaking his hands, “I was joking.”