“Be it so, Colonel,” sighed she, plaintively. “Like a lone beacon on a rock, with I forget the quotation.”
“With the phos-phos-phos-phate of lime upon it?” said Purvis, “that new discov-co-covery?”
“With no such thing! A figure is, I perceive, a dangerous mode of expression.”
“Ha! ha! ha!” cried he, with a peculiar cackle, whose hysteric notes always carried himself into the seventh heaven of enjoyment, “you would cut a pretty figure if you were to be made a beacon of, and be burned like Moses. Ha! ha! ha!”
The lady turned from him in disdain, and addressed the Colonel.
“So you really think that they are embarrassed, and that is the true reason of their coming abroad?”
“I believe I may say I know it, ma'am!” rejoined he. “There is a kind of connection between our families, although I should be very sorry they 'd hear of it, the Badelys and the Harringtons are first cousins.”
“Oh, to be sure!” broke in Purvis. “Jane Harrington was father; no, no, not father she was mo-mo-mother of Tom Badely; no! that is n't it, she was his aunt, or his brother-in-law, I forget which.”
“Pray be good enough, sir, not to involve a respectable family in a breach of common law,” said Haggerstone, tartly, “and leave the explanation to me.”
“How I do dislike dat English habit of countin' cousins,” said the Pole; “you never see tree, four English togeder without a leetle tree of genealogie in de middle, and dey do sit all round, fighting for de fruit.”