“Mrs. Brown, the classic form of Socrates dwindles before yours! I place you immediately upon the staff of the Torch.”
Mrs. Brown is puzzled. “I don’t hold with torches, sir. Sam’s link-boy, last week in the great fog, flourishing one about like a fool, set fire to all the straw—such a piece o’ work—and Sam warn’t hinsured.”
“I wince under the moral lesson which you convey by your apologue to my journal, but——”
“How much longer are you going to waste in chaffing this woman?” says Bertram, very angrily. “There’s an empty hansom passing. Take it.”
“Take it yourself. Mrs. Brown, your lips drop pearls of wisdom. Yet you are servile, Mrs. Brown. Are we not all equal before the great Bona Dea of Nature?”
“Equal, sir?” repeats Mrs. Brown, with fine scorn. “That’s his rot; yet when he come to our place one day, and we was eatin’ good Dutch cheese and ’errings, he well-nigh fainted at the stink on ’em!”
Fanshawe laughs delightedly.
“He live on peaches and pinehapples, he do,” she continued, with a snort; “and he’s spoilt a good seasonable chance o’ settlin’ herself as my daughter had with the young man round the corner——”
“Shut up that jaw, Fanshawe!” cries Bertram, falling into low language in his wrath.
“Will you go to Folliott and Hake’s or not?” asks his friend.