“I like that name for a parson,” again interposed my wife. “It suggests, you know, a slender frame, a pale face, taper fingers.”
I paid no heed, but went on:
---- “Was excused payment of some £900 for birds—loreèes, avadavats, lovebirds, quakers, cutthroats—furnished his wife during the short space of ten months.”[64]
“But I will not be as extravagant as any of those misguided ladies were,” remarked my wife, most sensibly.
“Well, then, there will be no trouble. Everything necessary I will of course pay for willingly, as I could be made to pay for them, if unwilling. Even a piano, perhaps, I will stand;[65] or false teeth;[66] but, mind you, not quack medicines,[67] though you are a duck.”
“I am glad to hear ‘that you’ll vouchsafe me raiment, bed, and food’; please begin now with the last named necessary article, for I am hungry.” Mrs. Lawyer was a practical woman.
“I presume it is time for lunch,” I replied. “Ah me! I wish lawyers in this nineteenth century could get their dinners as cheaply as they could in days gone by, when the client paid therefor, as appears in many an ancient register. The clerk of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, entered on his books that he paid to Robert Fylpott, learned in the law, for his counsel given, 3s. 8d., with 6d. for his dinner. Tempora mutantur. There’s a restaurant. Let us enter.”
We entered accordingly, and a very good luncheon we had, except for one slight contretemps. While engaged upon my macaroni soup, a long, reddish thread—as I surmised—revealed itself to my vision. Calling the waiter, I demanded how it came there.
“Ah!” said the man, quite cheerfully, “I can tell you where that came from. Our cook’s in love, sir, and is constantly opening a locket containing a lock of his sweetheart’s hair. Of course, some of it occasionally falls into the dishes.”
“Disgusting!” said my wife.