It was Miss Duck’s birthday—which birthday let us not be ungallant enough to inquire. Georgina herself confessed to thirty-three, but Jabez had heard her confess to quite that amount of years on many previous anniversaries when there had been no company present; he wisely held his tongue, and concluded that Georgina had been adding up with the trifling omission of a ten.
It was quite a festive occasion this evening at the little house at Dalston. Miss Jackson from over the way was invited, and so was her young brother; Bess and George were of the party, and Jabez came home an hour earlier in order to assist Georgina in doing the honours.
Tea was over and cleared away, and in its place there stood upon the table a plate of biscuits, a decanter of port, a decanter of sherry, and a plate of oranges cut into quarters.
Miss Jackson, between sundry fits of weeping, had confided to Bess that birthdays always made her miserable; and Miss Jackson’s brother, supremely uncomfortable in a collar that would keep coming unbuttoned, sat on the edge of a chair and blushed crimson every time anyone looked at him.
Miss Jackson’s brother was a nervous youth of nineteen, who wrote sonnets to Venus and odes to Diana of the most impassioned order, but could not look a mortal female in the face without going the colour of a boiled lobster.
After tea he wriggled on the edge of his chair, and divided his time between rebuttoning his collar and pretending to be deeply interested in the pattern of the carpet.
‘Georgina dear,’ said Miss Jackson, during a pause in the conversation, ‘how sad it is to think that in the midst of this festivity’—Miss Jackson glanced at the cut oranges and sweet biscuits—‘we are really celebrating the close of another year of your dear life.’
‘Lor, Carry, don’t!’ said Georgina. ‘You give one the creeps.’
‘Alas!’ sighed Carry, ‘we are all one year nearer the grave than we were a year ago.’
Her eyes filled with tears, and she mopped them with her pocket-handkerchief.