“Come,” cried he, offering to take my hand, “where is he? Which hand is he in? Let me examine?”
“No, no, I thank you; I sha'n't make you my confessor, whenever I take one.”
He did not much like this; but I did not mean he should.
Afterwards he told us a most unaccountably ridiculous story of a crying wife. A gentleman, he said, of his acquaintance had married lately his own kept mistress; and last Sunday he had dined with the bride and bridegroom, but, to his utter astonishment, without any apparent reason in the world, in the middle of dinner or tea, she burst into a violent fit of crying, and went out of the room, though there was not the least quarrel, and the sposo seemed all fondness and attention.
“What, then,” said I, somewhat maliciously, I grant, “had you been saying to er?”
“Oh, thank you!” said he, with a half-affronted bow, “I expected this! I declare I thought you would conclude it was me!”
MANAGER HELIOGABALUS.
Somebody told me (but not your father) that the Opera singers would not be likely to get any money out of Sheridan this year. “Why that fellow grows fat,” says I, “like Heliogabalus, upon the tongues of nightingales.” Did I tell you that bright thing before?—Mrs. Thrale to Fanny Burney.