"Oh, sir!" timidly responded the lady.
"Yes, adorable Jemima! I can no longer repress my emotion. You see before you a victim to your charms. The moment I beheld you, I don't know how it was, but my heart thrilled with a transport delightful as it was new. I felt—I felt—in short, I felt as I never felt before. My senses forsook me, and I said and did I know not what. These soulless creatures treated my confusion with ridicule; but, in your eyes, methought I could read pity, compassion, commiseration, sympathy. Say, was I right, or was I misled by the fond delusions of my own passion?"
"Oh, sir!" again exclaimed the bewildered Jemima.
"That look! I was not then deceived. Oh extend that pity into love! I lay myself and my fortune at your feet." And here Mr Simon Silky slipped off the sofa and down upon his knees, overcome partly with love and partly with intoxication. "Dearest Jemima! say only that you will be mine?"
"Oh, sir!" once more sighed the blushing maiden, dropping her head upon the shoulder of her suitor, who acknowledged the movement by snatching a kiss from her pouting lips.
"Ods! that came twangingly off. I'm afraid we're like to spoil sport here," exclaimed Mr Slap'emup, who at this moment entered the room, with Miss Gingerly on his arm.
"Gracious! how very improper!" cried Miss Gingerly, wishing from the depth of her soul that it had only been her own case.
"What's improper, ma'am?" retorted Silky, turning to her a look of drunken gravity, and endeavouring, with no little difficulty, to get on his legs again. "If I choose to kiss this young lady, or this young lady chooses to kiss me, that's no business of yours, I suppose? 'Have not saints lips, and holy palmers, too?' as the divine Shakspere says; and what are lips for, I should like to know, if not to kiss? Don't frown at me, Miss Graveairs. I'm a man—a man, ma'am, and I shall do just as I please. Shan't I, Jemima, dear?"
He turned for an answer to his appeal; but the young lady had left the room.
"Jemima, I say," continued Silky, getting more and more overcome. He looked around the room; and, finding no trace of the lady, began chanting in a lackadaisical tone—