With scornful vehemence, Joe declined the invitation.
Eliza was sternly advised to tear up the card, but instead she chose to set it on the chimney-piece. The rash act was too much for her lord. Once more he rose from his chair, tore the card into little pieces and flung them into a grate artistically decorated with colored paper.
“You are jealous!” said Eliza, laughing.
“Of the likes of him! Holy smoke! But if you think we are going to have such trash in the same room as the Marquis, you make an error.”
The words had hardly been uttered when shouts yet more piercing came from the street. Eliza made a hasty return to the window.
“Come and look, Joe!” she cried breathlessly. “Here he is with his top hat and eyeglass. He’s that dossy you wouldn’t know him. He’s dressed up like a tailor’s dummy.”
But Joe declined to budge.
“It fairly makes me sick to think of the feller,” he said.
A little later, when the tumult in the street had died down a bit, Joe settled himself in his chair for an afternoon nap. Eliza, duly noting the symptoms, retired on tiptoe to another room, closing the door after her gently. But today, alas, the skyey influences were adverse. Joe had barely entered oblivion when a smart tap at the street door shattered this precarious peace. With a grudge against society he rose once more, shambled across the room and flung open the door, half expecting to find that the urchin had returned to torment him. A dramatic surprise was in store. On the threshold was a creature so stylishly trim that even the blasé eye of the Metropolitan Force was sensibly thrilled in beholding her. “A bit of class” without a doubt, although adorned by the colors of the People’s Candidate, and surprisingly cool in sheer defiance of the thermometer.
“Good afternoon!” The tone of half-confidential intimacy was quite irresistible. “May I have a little talk with you?”