“What, again so soon?” hazarded Lucy, one day that he bade her invite them. “I hardly know how to word my invitation; I have exhausted the forms.”
“If you say another word, I'll make them come every night. Am I to have no amusement?” he added, in a deep tone of reproach; “they make me laugh.”
“Ah! I forgot; forgive me.”
“Little hypocrite; don't they you too, pray? Why, you are as dull as ditchwater the other evenings.”
“Me, dear, dull with you?”
“Yes, Miss Crocodile, dull with a pattern uncle and his friend—and your admirer.” He watched her to see how she would take this last word. Catch her taking it at all. “I am never dull with you, dear uncle,” said she; “but a third person, however estimable, is a certain restraint, and when that person is not very lively—” Here the explanation came quietly to an untimely end, like those old tunes that finish in the middle or thereabouts.
“But that is the very thing; what do I ask them for to-night but to thaw Talboys?”
“To thaw Talboys? he! he!”
Lucy seemed so tickled by this expression that the old gentleman was sorry he had used it.
“I mean, they will make him laugh.” Then, to turn it off, he said hastily, “And don't forget the fiddle, Lucy.”