“She did n't marry the Duke; she married his chap-chaplain,” chimed in Purvis.
“Will you be quiet, Scroope?” remarked the lady.
“I ought to know,” rejoined he, grown courageous in the goodness of his cause. “He was Bob Nutty. Bitter Bob, we always called him at school. He had a kind of a poly-poly-poly—”
“A polyanthus,” suggested Haggerstone.
“No. It was a poly-polypus a polypus, that made him snuffle in his speech.”
“Ach Gott!” sighed the Pole; but whether in sorrow for poor “Bob,” or in utter weariness at his historian, was hard to say.
“Lady Foxington, too,” said Mrs. Ricketts, “made a serious request that we should be intimate with her friend Lady Hester. She was candid enough to say that her Ladyship would not suit me. 'She has no soul, Zoe,' wrote she, 'so I need n't say more.'”
“Dat is ver bad,” said the Pole, gravely.
“Still, I should have made her acquaintance, for the sake of that young creature Miss Dalton, I think they call her and whom I rather suspect to be a distant cousin of ours.”
“Yes; there were Dawkinses at Exeter a very respectable solicitor, one was, Joe Dawkins,” came in Purvis; “and he used to say we were co-co-co-connections.”