‘Got over!’ repeated Fanny, with immeasurable scorn.
‘For a time,’ Mr Sparkler submitted.
Honouring the last feeble suggestion with no notice, Mrs Sparkler declared with bitterness that it really was too bad, and that positively it was enough to make one wish one was dead!
‘However,’ she said, when she had in some measure recovered from her sense of personal ill-usage; ‘provoking as it is, and cruel as it seems, I suppose it must be submitted to.’
‘Especially as it was to be expected,’ said Mr Sparkler.
‘Edmund,’ returned his wife, ‘if you have nothing more becoming to do than to attempt to insult the woman who has honoured you with her hand, when she finds herself in adversity, I think you had better go to bed!’
Mr Sparkler was much afflicted by the charge, and offered a most tender and earnest apology. His apology was accepted; but Mrs Sparkler requested him to go round to the other side of the sofa and sit in the window-curtain, to tone himself down.
‘Now, Edmund,’ she said, stretching out her fan, and touching him with it at arm’s length, ‘what I was going to say to you when you began as usual to prose and worry, is, that I shall guard against our being alone any more, and that when circumstances prevent my going out to my own satisfaction, I must arrange to have some people or other always here; for I really cannot, and will not, have another such day as this has been.’
Mr Sparkler’s sentiments as to the plan were, in brief, that it had no nonsense about it. He added, ‘And besides, you know it’s likely that you’ll soon have your sister—’
‘Dearest Amy, yes!’ cried Mrs Sparkler with a sigh of affection. ‘Darling little thing! Not, however, that Amy would do here alone.’