“Then how shall I ever know my husband?”
“Ah, dear Lady Woolhead, you have hit on the fundamental question of our age. Indeed, how can you recognise him, when you do not know, nor ever have known, him? And I have no doubt that he is in the same plight about yourself.” And Lord Somerville would remark,—
“How amusing life must be to you, my dear Danford; gifted with such satirical wit, you need never pass a dull moment.” That was all very true, but had you asked the Tivoli comedian what he really thought of his employ in Lord Somerville’s household, he would have told you, though with bated breath, that it was not an easy mission to keep a Mayfair cynic amused, for at the vaguest approach of dulness, his lordship threatened to give up the game of life, and go over the way to see there what sort of a farce was on the bills.
“I say, Dick, how would Adam have looked in a hansom, flourishing a branch of oak tree to stop the cabby?”
“And what does your lordship think of Eve’s attitude in a four-wheeler, ducking her fair head in and out of the window to indicate the way to the driver?”
“Danford, this won’t do. The naked form is not at its advantage seated upright in a brougham, nor is it decorative when doubled up on the back seat of a victoria.”
They were both struck by the unæsthetic appearance of the present vehicles, as they arrived one afternoon at Mrs Webster’s house in Carlton Terrace.
“We shall have to discover some suitable conveyance for the Apollos and Venuses of new London.”
Standing on the steps of the house they passed in review all fashionable London stepping out of landaus, victorias, broughams, hansoms; certainly the kaleidoscopic vision was not a success.