'And has she then fail'd in her truth,
The beautiful maid I adore?'
But I don't care that for her!" And he tried to snap his fingers; but failed in the attempt. "It's an ungrateful world—a vile world."
"Oh, gracious me! let me away," exclaimed Miss Gingerly, in alarm. "He's certainly tipsy."
"Tipsy—tipsy! Who's tipsy? Let me see her. Woman, woman, to get yourself into such a state! I'm ashamed of you; I am indeed. But it's the weakness of the sex.
'Frailty, thy name is woman!'"
This apostrophe was addressed to some visionary female that flitted before Mr Silky's mental optics, and whom he followed, with his hands groping before him, with the voice and gesture of Mr Charles Kean pursuing the airdrawn dagger in the character of Macbeth. "Laugh away; it's very amusing, isn't it! Nero fiddled while Rome was burning; but I know better."
"Mr Silky, you'll better go home," said Mrs Greenwood, who, with the remainder of the party, had by this time entered the room.
"Home! exactly so. I am at home, my charmer—perfectly at home; and you're at home; we're all at home. But no more wine, Mrs Greenwood; temperance and teetotalism for ever. We are beset with temptations in this wicked world—temptations, I say—Jemima, you're an angel! It is as much as a man can do to preserve his uprightness." And, in proof that it was more than he could, down rolled our hero on the floor, in a profound stupor.
"Carry Master Silence to bed," remarked the ingenious Slap'emup, highly tickled with the catastrophe that had befallen the too—too bashful Silky.
A coach was procured, and he was conveyed to his lodgings, where the sun found him in bed at noon next day. His dreams had been of the most ghastly kind. He had fancied himself compelled, by a fiend, to swallow huge goblets of port wine, strongly adulterated with brimstone, and dragged about by a fury, who held his neck within a halter. The fiend was Slap'emup—the fury, Miss Jemima Linton. He started from his dream, and with his hand pressed against his aching head, fell to adjusting the confused reminiscences of the previous evening's proceedings. He remembered nothing but that he had proposed for the hand of some young lady or other, and had been accepted. Well for him it was that memory went no farther, or he would never have found courage to visit Mrs Greenwood again. That he did visit her again, however, may be inferred from an announcement which the newspapers, not many weeks after, gave to the public:—