Brummell here forced his way through the crowd in a fit of desperation and disappeared.
"That's a queer chap!" said Smith, much offended; "but, good Lord, who have we got here? Crazy Jane?"
The personage who thus excited his surprise was Lady Owen, who came sailing towards them under the escort of a young barrister, whose broad unmeaning face some ladies have been pleased to call handsome. A profusion of full-grown artificial wheat was scattered over her head in grotesque confusion. Several dark ringlets were suffered to fall loosely over her neck and shoulders, and the rest was confined by immense red roses, indigenous, probably, to Brobdingnag or Patagonia, or some other climate where everything is gigantic. She did not appear to affect youth, but voluptuousness; rolling her eyes in affectation of libertinism, such as she had no inclination to indulge, yet seemed as anxious to excite, as if it had been her natural vocation. Indeed that was the character of her countenance, which could have expressed no other feeling even at her best beloved's funeral!
Miss Smith now addressed a young man, with stiff dark whiskers, by the appellation of brother, who, though a better grammarian, appeared to be as much more radically vulgar than his father, as he was presuming and self-sufficient.
"Laws! William," said his youngest sister, "Pa has had a nice job with us three women."
"We are very much obliged to you, indeed," the eldest Miss Smith observed.
"I told you before," said the pompous youth, pulling up his neck-cloth without looking at his sisters, "I have frequently informed you that brothers attending their sisters in public is not at all the correct thing, neither is this the proper spot to wait in."
"Don't tell me your nonsense about the proper spot," said old Smith, "I have almost had the breath shoved out of my body to-night."
"Pray William," said his mother, "why do you come to the Hoppera in that hodious round 'at, after giving such a price for a three-cornered one?"
"If you inquire, Madam," answered William, with grave contempt, "you will learn that a round hat is the correct thing at this time of the year."