“My dear O’Malley, my dear boy!” said the major, with the look of a father-in-law in his eye.
“The spirit of an officer and a gentleman spoke there,” said Mrs. Dalrymple, now carried beyond all prudence by the hope that my attack might arouse my dormant friend into a counter-declaration; nothing, however, was further from poor Sparks, who began to think he had been unconsciously drinking tea with five lunatics.
“If he supposes,” said I, rising from my chair, “that his silence will pass with me as any palliation—”
“Oh, dear! oh, dear! there will be a duel. Papa, dear, why don’t you speak to Mr. O’Malley?”
“There now, O’Malley, sit down. Don’t you see he is quite in error?”
“Then let him say so,” said I, fiercely.
“Ah, yes, to be sure,” said Fanny. “Do say it; say anything he likes, Mr. Sparks.”
“I must say,” said Mrs. Dalrymple, “however sorry I may feel in my own house to condemn any one, that Mr. Sparks is very much in the wrong.”
Poor Sparks looked like a man in a dream.
“If he will tell Charles,—Mr. O’Malley, I mean,” said Matilda, blushing scarlet, “that he meant nothing by what he said—”