“Clarence, love! come down, dear! Tell Mr. Lovel everything. Come down and tell him this moment,” cries Lady Baker to her son, who at this moment appears on the corridor which was round the hall.
“What’s the row now, pray?” And Captain Clarence descends, breaking his shins over poor Elizabeth’s trunks, and calling down on them his usual maledictions.
“Tell Mr. Lovel, where you saw that—that person, Clarence! Now, sir, listen to my Cecilia’s brother!”
“Saw her—saw her, in blue and spangles, in the Rose and the Bulbul, at the Prince’s Theatre—and a doosed nice-looking girl she was too!”—says the captain.
“There, sir!”
“There, Frederick!” cry the matrons in a breath.
“And what then?” asks Lovel.
“Mercy! you ask, What then, Frederick? Do you know what a theatre is? Tell Frederick what a theatre is, Mr. Batchelor, and that my grandchildren must not be educated by——”
“My grandchildren—my Cecilia’s children,” shrieks the other, “must not be poll-luted by——”
“Silence!” I say. “Have you a word against her—have you, pray, Baker?”