With some difficulty he regained his chair, after stumbling over a footstool, and crushing the tail of a King Charles cocker, that was snorting on the hearthrug in all the offensiveness of canine obesity. His distress was at its climax.
"When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions,"
thought he, recurring once more to the Beauties of Shakspere. His ears felt as if they had been newly scalded, and objects floated in hazy confusion before his eyes. He commenced sipping his tea with desperate energy, wishing for a moment that it had been so much prussic acid. The patter of many voices sounded in his ears. They must be talking of him, "for they laughed consumedly;" and that confounded Slap'emup was obviously getting up a reputation for wit by cutting minute jokes at his expense.
"You've been at the Exhibition, Mr Silky," said Mrs Greenwood, recalling him from the state of mental imbecility into which he was fast sinking.
"The Exhibition, you said, ma'am! Yes, yes, certainly, the Exhibition. Oh yes!" rejoined Mr Silky, struggling to concentrate his scattered faculties.
"Well, what is your opinion about the portrait?" continued his hostess.
"Portrait, really—which of them—there's so many?"
"Why, Mr Silky, what has come over you to-night? The ladies have been like to pull each other to pieces, for the last five minutes, about the portrait of an officer a little to the left of the door of the first room; and, I declare, you have not heard a word that has been going. Pretty doings, Mr Simon; and who, may I ask, is the happy lady that so engrosses your thoughts?"
"Oh, Mrs. Greenwood!"
"Well, well, then, if it's a secret, I won't press it! But what is your opinion of the portrait? Miss Barbara Silliman here maintains it is beauty in the abstract."