"Your servant, ma'am—your most obedient, young ladies," said he: then, starting with well-affected surprise, he ejaculated, "Ah! if my eyes doesn't deceive me in my old age, that's Miss Kate Wilmot, werily and truly!"
"Mr. Banks!" said Katherine, in a tone expressive of both surprise and aversion; for she remembered that the undertaker used to call upon Smithers to purchase the rope by means of which criminals had been executed.
"Yes, my dear—my name is, as you say, Banks—Edward Banks, of Globe Lane, London—Furnisher of Funerals on New and Economic Principles—Good Deal Coffin, Eight Shillings and Sixpence—Stout Oak, Thirty-five Shillings—Patent Funeral Carriage, One Pound Eleven—First Rate Carriage-Funeral, Mutes and Feathers, Four Pound Four—Catholic Fittings——"
"Really, sir," exclaimed Mr. Bennet, impatiently, "this is not a very pleasant subject for conversation; and if you have come upon no other business than to recite your Prospectus——"
"A thousand apologies, sir—a thousand apologies," interrupted Mr. Banks, calmly sinking into a seat. "But whenever I see a few or a many mortal wessels gathered together, I always think that the day must come when they'll be nothink more than blessed carkisses and then, Mr. Bennet," added the undertaker, shaking his head solemnly, and applying a dirty white handkerchief to his eyes, "how pleasant to the wirtuous feelings must it be to know where to get the funeral done on the newest and most economic principles."
"Katherine, do you know this person?" inquired the farmer, irritated by the intruder's pertinacity in his gloomy topic.
"I have seen him three or four times at Mr. Smithers' house in London," was the answer; "but Mr. Banks well knows that I never exchanged ten words with him in my life."
"Then you do not come to see Miss Wilmot?" demanded Mr. Bennet, turning towards the undertaker.
"No, sir—no," answered Banks, heaving a deep sigh. "Did you not perceive, sir, that I was quite took at a non-plush when I set my wenerable eyes on the blessed countenance of that charming gal? But pardon me, sir—pardon me, if I am someot long in coming to the pint:—it is, however, my natur' to ramble when I reflects on the pomps and wanities of this wicked world; and natur' is natur,' sir, after all—is it not, ma'am?"
Here he turned with a most dolorous expression of countenance towards Mrs. Bennet.