‘And will you betray me?’ eagerly inquired Hicks, who in his alarm had even forgotten to quote.
‘I betray you! Won’t you betray me?’
‘Never: no one shall know, to my dying day, that you had a hand in the business,’ responded the agitated Hicks, with an inflamed countenance, and his hair standing on end as if he were on the stool of an electrifying machine in full operation.
‘People must know that, some time or other—within a year, I imagine,’ said Mr. Calton, with an air of great self-complacency. ‘We may have a family.’
‘We!—That won’t affect you, surely?’
‘The devil it won’t!’
‘No! how can it?’ said the bewildered Hicks. Calton was too much inwrapped in the contemplation of his happiness to see the equivoque between Hicks and himself; and threw himself back in his chair. ‘Oh, Matilda!’ sighed the antique beau, in a lack-a-daisical voice, and applying his right hand a little to the left of the fourth button of his waistcoat, counting from the bottom. ‘Oh, Matilda!’
‘What Matilda?’ inquired Hicks, starting up.
‘Matilda Maplesone,’ responded the other, doing the same.
‘I marry her to-morrow morning,’ said Hicks.