"'With whom pray do you console yourself?'
"'I have not had a call, my dear, for the last five years!'
"'It will come on you when you shall be born again, by the assistance of Mrs. Massey's prayers,' I remarked."
I am, however, wandering from my subject.
No matter, it was a very bad one!
It was Fred Lamb who dined with me, read to me, talked of love to me, and looked all passion, just like the satyr of my vision.
'What vision, pray?' the reader asks; that is to say if ever I should be honoured with a reader, which is not at all certain. I am ready prepared and armed for abuse of every sort and kind: but not to be read! No matter! If this happens, it will be entirely Stockdale's fault, for not enlivening the work with pretty pictures as I have suggested to him, and certainly cannot, by the most remote possibility, be owing to any demerit of mine!
Above all, I wanted Wellington to be exhibited, dripping with wet, standing opposite my street-door at midnight, bawling up to Argyle, who should be representing my old Abigail, from my bed-room window. Good gracious! I quite forgot to tell this adventure! How could I be so ridiculous and negligent? Never mind, you shall have it now—But there is poor Fred Lamb waiting all this time, in my select library! I can't help it—There's no getting on with Fred Lamb. I never could use him to any purpose in all my life; and yet there's matter enough in him too! What matters that? Let it stand over, or let it pass. Fred Lamb can read Zimmerman, which he will find among my books. It will teach him to love solitude and to profit by it, while my readers amuse themselves with the interesting adventure which happened on the very night of Wellington's arrival from Spain, and which I beg a thousand pardons for not having made them acquainted with in due order and proper time.
"Good news! Glorious news! Who calls?" said Master Puff, the newsman.—Not that anybody called the least in the world; but Wellington was really said to have won a mighty battle and was hourly expected. Cannons were fired and much tallow consumed in illumination. His Grace of Argyle came to me earlier than usual on that memorable evening; but, being unwell and love-sick, he found me in my bed-chamber.