"What is up?" cries Bobby, advancing toward me with an overpowering curiosity, not unmixed with admiration, legible on his burnt face; "what has summoned those glorious sunset tints into your eyes and nose?"
"Which of Turner's pictures," says Algy, putting up his hand in the shape of a spy-glass to one eye, and critically regarding me through it, "is she so like in coloring? the 'Founding of Carthage,' or 'The Fighting Temeraire?'"
"Shame! shame!" cries Bobby, in a mock hortatory tone, trying to swell himself out to the shape and bulk of our fat rector, and to speak in his wheezy tone, "that a young woman so richly dowered with the good things of this life; a young woman with a husband and a deer-park in possession, and a house-warming in prospect—"
"But I have not," interrupt I, speaking for the first time, and with a snuffliness of tone engendered by much crying.
"Have not? have not what?"
"Have not a house-warming in prospect," reply I, with distinct malignity. A moment's silence. My bomb-shell has worked quite as much havoc as I expected.
"But where has it gone to since this morning?" asks Algy, looking rather blank.
"What do you mean?" cries Tou Tou, shrilly; "it was only last night that you were asking me for the Brat's address that you might invite him."
"And tell him to bring a judiciously-selected assortment of undergraduate friends with him," supplements Bobby, loudly.
"Yes," say I, sighing, "I know I did; but last night was last night."