“Here’s your umbrella, Frere,” remarked Bracy, handing it to him as he spoke; “many thanks for the loan. I don’t wonder you are careful of it; it’s a most inestimable property, and has afforded me half-an-hour’s deep and tranquil enjoyment. But of all the pompous fools that ever walked this earth Grandeville is facile princeps.”
“He’s no fool either,” returned Frere.
“Then why does he behave as sich?” demanded Bracy. “His conceit and egotism are inconceivable. He’s a regular modern Cyclops; he has one great ‘I’ in the middle of his forehead, through the medium of which he looks at everything. One really feels an obligation to poke fun at that man. Well, I can’t accuse myself of neglect of duty in that particular, that’s a consolatory reflection; but he’s enough to convert the slowest old anchorite that ever chewed peas into a practical joker.”
“He was severe on the excellent Lady Lombard,” observed his companion.
“Did you not notice his remark about riches being respectable only when in the possession of ‘—ar—those connected with the old historical families of England’? That gave me a new idea.”
“A thing always worth having, if but from its rarity,” replied Frere. “What was it?”
“Why, it occurred to me what fun it would be to marry him to Lady Lombard—more particularly after his abuse of her to-day.”
“A project more easy to conceive than to execute,” returned Frere, laughing.
“I don’t know that,” answered Bracy confidently; “if I once set my mind on a thing, I generally contrive to accomplish it. It did not at first sight appear likely that De Grandeville would carry your old cotton umbrella through some of the most fashionable streets in London at three o’clock in the afternoon, yet you see he did it.”
“You’re a remarkable man, my dear Bracy, and I have the greatest faith in your powers of management, but if you can induce Marmaduke de Grandeville to marry the widow of the pawnbroker and the pickle-man, you must be the very—well, never mind who—here we are at the Palaeontological.”