"A genuine humbug, I should say—gooseberry champagne at two shillings a bottle," was the somewhat professional verdict on Miss Hendy's claims.
"Oh! you shouldn't talk that way of Miss Hendy—who knows but she may be my mamma soon?"
"He can never be such a confounded jackass!" said Mr Sidsby, without giving a local habitation or a name to the personal pronoun he.
"He loses his daughters, I can tell him," said Miss Sophy with a toss of her head, that set all the flowers on the top of her bonnet shaking—"Emily and I are quite resolved on that."
"But what can you do?" enquired the gentleman, who did not appear to be very nearly akin to Œdipus.
"Do? Why, don't we get possession of mamma's fortune if he marries; and can't we—oh, you've squeezed my ring into my finger!"
"My dear Sophy, I was only trying to show you how much I admired your spirit. I hope he'll marry Miss Hendy with all my heart."
When a conversation has got to this point, a chronicle of any pretensions to respectability will maintain a rigid silence; and we will therefore only observe, that by the time Mr William Whalley and Emily had come to Marlborough House, their conversation had arrived at a point where discretion becomes as indispensably a chronicler's duty as in the case of the other couple.
"We must get home," said Sophy.
"Why should you go yet? There is no chance of your father being back from the city for hours to come."