“All right, madam.”
“And my basket of medicines and the books?”
“O. K.,” replied Dick, sententiously.
“Oh! how often must I tell you not to use those odious slang terms?” said his wife, reprovingly.
“Oh! Mrs. John Seymour knows me of old,” said Mr. Follingsbee, winking facetiously at Lillie. “We’ve had many a jolly lark together; haven’t we, Lill?”
“Certainly we have,” said Lillie, affably. “But come, darling,” she added to Mrs. Follingsbee, “don’t you want to be shown your room?”
“Go it, then, my dearie; and I’ll toddle up with the fol-de-rols and what-you-may-calls,” said the incorrigible Dick. “There, wife, Mrs. John Seymour shall go first, so that you shan’t be jealous of her and me. You know we came pretty near being in interesting relations ourselves at one time; didn’t we, now?” he said with another wink.
It is said that a thorough-paced naturalist can reconstruct a whole animal from one specimen bone. In like manner, we imagine that, from these few words of dialogue, our expert readers can reconstruct Mr. and Mrs. Follingsbee: he, vulgar, shallow, sharp, keen at a bargain, and utterly without scruples; with a sort of hilarious, animal good nature that was in a state of constant ebullition. He was, as Richard Baxter said of a better man, “always in that state of hilarity that another would be in when he hath taken a cup too much.”
Dick Follingsbee began life as a peddler. He was now reputed to be master of untold wealth, kept a yacht and race-horses, ran his own theatre, and patronized the whole world and creation in general with a jocular freedom. Mrs. Follingsbee had been a country girl, with small early advantages, but considerable ambition. She had married Dick Follingsbee, and helped him up in the world, as a clever, ambitious woman may. The last few years she had been spending in Paris, improving her mind and manners in reading Dumas’ and Madame George Sand’s novels, and availing herself of such outskirt advantages of the court of the Tuileries as industrious, pains-taking Americans, not embarrassed by self-respect, may command.