“Not mine, you know? No; not mine, I know! Pussy’s!”
Fixed as the look the young fellow meets is, there is yet in it some strange power of suddenly including the sketch over the chimneypiece.
“Pussy’s, Jack! We must drink Many happy returns to her. Come, uncle; take your dutiful and sharp-set nephew in to dinner.”
As the boy (for he is little more) lays a hand on Jasper’s shoulder, Jasper cordially and gaily lays a hand on his shoulder, and so Marseillaise-wise they go in to dinner.
“And, Lord! here’s Mrs. Tope!” cries the boy. “Lovelier than ever!”
“Never you mind me, Master Edwin,” retorts the Verger’s wife; “I can take care of myself.”
“You can’t. You’re much too handsome. Give me a kiss because it’s Pussy’s birthday.”
“I’d Pussy you, young man, if I was Pussy, as you call her,” Mrs. Tope blushingly retorts, after being saluted. “Your uncle’s too much wrapt up in you, that’s where it is. He makes so much of you, that it’s my opinion you think you’ve only to call your Pussys by the dozen, to make ’em come.”
“You forget, Mrs. Tope,” Mr. Jasper interposes, taking his place at the table with a genial smile, “and so do you, Ned, that Uncle and Nephew are words prohibited here by common consent and express agreement. For what we are going to receive His holy name be praised!”
“Done like the Dean! Witness, Edwin Drood! Please to carve, Jack, for I can’t.”