“I’ll tell you, sir—I’ll tell you directly why I’ve come to London,” repeated Mrs. Peckover, backing majestically from the tea-table, and rolling round easily on her own axis in the direction of the couch, to ask for the fullest particulars of the state of Mrs. Blyth’s health.
“Much better, my good friend—much better,” was the cheerful answer; “but do tell us (we are so glad to see you!) how you came to surprise us all in this way?”
“Well, ma’am,” began Mrs. Peckover, “it’s almost as great a surprise to me to be in London, as it is—Be quiet, young Good-for-Nothing; I won’t even shake hands with you if you don’t behave yourself!” These last words she addressed to Zack, whose favorite joke it had always been, from the day of their first acquaintance at Valentine’s house, to pretend to be violently in love with her. He was now standing with his arms wide open, the toasting-fork in one hand and the muffin he had burnt in the other, trying to look languishing, and entreating Mrs. Peckover to give him a kiss.
“When you know how to toast a muffin properly, p’raps I may give you one,” said she, chuckling as triumphantly over her own small retort as if she had been a professed wit. “Do, Mr. Blyth, sir, please to keep him quiet, or I shan’t be able to get on with a single word of what I’ve got to say. Well, you see, ma’am, Doctor Joyce—”
“How is he?” interrupted Valentine, handing Mrs. Peckover a cup of tea.
“He’s the best gentleman in the world, sir, but he will have his glass of port after dinner; and the end of it is, he’s laid up again with the gout.”
“And Mrs. Joyce?”
“Laid up too, sir—it’s a dreadful sick house at the Rectory—laid up with the inferlenzer.”
“Have any of the children caught the influenza too?” asked Mrs. Blyth. “I hope not.”
“No, ma’am, they’re all nicely, except the youngest; and it’s on account of her—don’t you remember her, sir, growing so fast, when you was last at the Rectory?—that I’m up in London.