“Mr Twitter is rather late to-night, I think?” said Mr Crackaby, consulting his watch, which was antique and turnipy in character.
“He is, indeed,” replied the hostess, “business must have detained him, for he is the very soul of punctuality. That is one of his many good qualities, and it is such a comfort, for I can always depend on him to the minute,—breakfast, dinner, tea; he never keeps us waiting, as too many men do, except, of course, when he is unavoidably detained by business.”
“Ah, yes, business has much to answer for,” remarked Mrs Loper, in a tone which suggested that she held business to be an incorrigibly bad fellow; “whatever mischief happens with one’s husband it’s sure to be business that did it.”
“Pardon me, madam,” objected the black sheep, whose name, by the way, was Stickler, “business does bring about much of the disaster that often appertains to wedded life, but mischief is sometimes done by other means, such, for instance, as accidents, robberies, murders—”
“Oh! Mr Stickler,” suddenly interrupted a stout, smiling lady, named Larrabel, who usually did the audience part of Mrs Twitter’s little tea parties, “how can you suggest such ideas, especially when Mr Twitter is unusually late?”
Mr Stickler protested that he had no intention of alarming the company by disagreeable suggestions, that he had spoken of accident, robbery, and murder in the abstract.
“There, you’ve said it all over again,” interrupted Mrs Larrabel, with an unwonted frown.
“But then,” continued Stickler, regardless of the interruption, “a broken leg, or a rifled pocket and stunned person, or a cut windpipe, may be applicable to the argument in hand without being applied to Mr Twitter.”
“Surely,” said Mrs Loper, who deemed the reply unanswerable.
In this edifying strain the conversation flowed on until the evening grew late and the party began to grow alarmed.