LA PRETIEUSE.
I went down to breakfast as usual overflowing with joyous thoughts. For mirth and for music the skylark is but a type of me. I warbled a few wood notes wild, and then full of the unborn work, addressed myself to my wife's eldest sister, and asked if she would permit me to dedicate the Book to her. “What book?” she replied. “The History,” said I, “of Dr. Daniel Dove of Doncaster, and his Horse Nobs.” She answered, “No indeed! I will have no such nonsense dedicated to me!”—and with that she drew up her upper lip, and the lower region of the nose. I turned to my wife's youngest sister: “Shall I have the pleasure of dedicating it to you?” She raised her eyes, inclined her head forwards with a smile of negation, and begged leave to decline the honour. “Commandante,” said I, to my wife and Commandress, “shall I dedicate it then to you?” My Commandante made answer, “not unless you have something better to dedicate.”
“So Ladies!” said I; “the stone which the builders rejected,”—and then looking at my wife's youngest sister—“Oh, it will be such a book!” The manner and the tone were so much in earnest that they arrested the bread and butter on the way to her mouth; and she exclaimed, with her eyes full of wonder and incredulity at the same time, “Why you never can be serious?” “Not serious?” said I; “why I have done nothing but think of it and dream of it the whole night.” “He told me so,” rejoined my Commandante, “the first thing in the morning.” “Ah Stupey!” cried my wife's eldest sister, accompanying the compliment with a protrusion of the head, and an extension of the lips, which disclosed not only the whole remaining row of teeth, but the chasms that had been made in it by the tooth drawer; hiatus valde lacrymabiles.
“Two volumes,” said I, “and this in the title-page!” So taking out my pencil, I drew upon the back of a letter the mysterious monogram, erudite in its appearance as the digamma of Mr. A. F. Valpy.
It past from hand to hand. “Why he is not in earnest?” said my wife's youngest sister. “He never can be,” replied my wife. And yet beginning to think that peradventure I was, she looked at me with a quick turn of the eye,—“a pretty subject indeed for you to employ your time upon! You,—vema whehaha yohu almad otenba twandri athancod!” I have thought proper to translate this part of my Commandante's speech into the Garamna tongue.
CHAPTER III. A. I.
THE UTILITY OF POCKETS. A COMPLIMENT PROPERLY RECEIVED.