“No such thing, sir; I said, or I meant to say—only you are so tiresome with your jokes, that you puzzle one—that Lucy being her own age, I mean Clara's, Mr. Fairless was to tell her how very glad she would be—and very natural it is for young people to like young people—to see her; and I hope you'll remember to tell her all I have said exactly, Mr. Fairless, for I'm always anxious to try to please and amuse her, she's so very dull and stupid, poor thing!”
To perform this utter impossibility I faithfully pledged myself; and, taking a hasty farewell of the ladies, hurried out of the room to conceal a fit of laughter which had been gradually becoming irrepressible.
“Laugh away, old boy,” cried Freddy, who had accompanied me into the hall; “no wonder I'm an odd fellow, for, as Pat would say, my mother was one before me, and no mistake. I wish you luck with the fair Clara—not that you'll see her—old Vernor will take care of that somehow or other; even if he's not at home, he'll have locked her up safely before he went out, depend upon it.”
“You do not mean that in sober earnest?” said I.
“Perhaps not actually in fact,” replied Freddy, “but in effect I believe he does. Clara tells Lucy she never sees any one.”
“She shall see me to-day, if I can possibly contrive it,” said I. “Oh for the good old days of chivalry, when knocking the guardian on the head, and running away with the imprisoned damsel afterwards, would have been accounted a very moral and gentlemanlike way of spending the morning!”
“Certainly, they had a pleasant knack of simplifying matters, 'those knights of old,'” replied Freddy; “but it's not a line of business that would have suited me at all; in balancing their accounts, the kicks always appear to have obtained a very uncomfortable preponderance over the halfpence; besides, the causa belli was a point on which their ideas were generally in a deplorable state of confusion: when one kills a man, it's as well to have some slight notion why one does it; and the case comes home to one still more closely if it's somebody else who's going to kill you.”
“You're about right there, Master Freddy,” said I, smiling as I shook hands with him, and quitted the house. %