“Why, Fanny,” whispered I, when we joined the ladies in the drawing-room, “you are growing quite frisky; what a row you and Lawless were making at dinner-time! I have not heard you talk and laugh so much for many a day.”
“Oh! your friend is famous fun,” replied Fanny—“perfectly irresistible; I assure you I am delighted with him—he is something quite new to me.”
“I am so glad you have asked Lawless here,” observed I to Oaklands; “do you see how much pleased and amused Fanny is with him?—he appears to have aroused her completely—the very thing we were wishing for. He'll be of more use to her than all of us put together.”
“He seems to me to talk a vast deal of nonsense,” replied Harry, rather crossly, as I fancied.
“And yet 1 can't help being amused by it,” replied I; “I'm like Fanny in that respect.”
“I was not aware your sister had a taste for that style of conversation. I confess it's a sort of thing which very soon tires me.”
“Splendid old fellow, Sir John,” observed Lawless in an undertone, seating himself by Fanny; “I never look at him without thinking of one of those jolly old Israelites who used to keep knocking about the country with a plurality of wives and families, and an immense stud of camels and donkeys: they read 'em out to us at church, you know—what do you call 'em, eh?”
“One of the Patriarchs, I suppose you mean,” replied Fanny, smiling.
“Eh—yes, that's the thing. Noah was rather in that line before he took to the water system, wasn't he? Well, now, if you can fancy one of these ancients, decently dressed in a blue coat with brass buttons, knee shorts and silk stockings, like a Christian, it's my belief he'd be the very moral (as the old women call it) of Sir John; uncommonly handsome he must have been—even better looking than Harry, when he was his age.”
“Mr. Oaklands is so pale and thin now,” replied Fanny.