"What should you say, Mrs. T., of our Tab marrying a man with ten thousand a-year? There's for you! Isn't that better than all your rel—— hem!"
"Oh, Tag, don't say that; but"—here she hastily turned down the leaf of Groans from the Bottomless Pit, and tossed that inestimable work upon the sofa—"do tell me, lovey! what are you talking about?"
"What indeed, Dolly!—I'm going to have him here to dinner next Sunday."
Miss Tag-rag having been listening with breathless eagerness to this little colloquy between her prudent and amiable parents, unconscious of what she was about, poured almost all the contents of the tea-pot into the sugar-basin, instead of her papa's and mamma's tea-cups.
"Have who, dear Tag?" inquired Mrs. Tag-rag, impatiently.
"Who? why whom but my Tittlebat Titmouse!! You've seen him, and heard me speak of him often, you know"——
"What!—that odious, nasty"——
"Hush, hush!" involuntarily exclaimed Tag-rag, with an apprehensive air—"That's all past and gone—I was always a little too hard on him. Well, anyhow, he's turned up all of a sudden master of ten thousand a-year. He has indeed—may this piece of toast choke me if he hasn't!"
Mrs. Tag-rag and her daughter sat in speechless wonder.
"Where did he see Tab, Taggy?" inquired at length Mrs. Tag-rag.