This is a pretty fine life for a banker’s clerk! thought I, stretching back in an arm-chair and smoking one of my uncle’s Imperiales, a cigar, Matilda, worth half-a-crown, as thick as your dainty wrist, and nearly ten inches long. Ten inches of bliss! O crudele fuoco! that so much leaf paradisaical should ever turn to innutritious ash!
Yesterday I should have expected Teazer to pull out a black cutty pipe, load it with cavendish tobacco, and call for a glass of rum. Now she sat in a low chair, her hands folded on her lap, quiet, attentive, gentle in aspect and manner, despite the bright flash that filled her eyes each time she raised them. I thought of yesterday’s comedy, the queer resolution that had prompted her, the histrionic ability that had fooled me. Were I to write such a story, I thought, who would believe me? It was one of those possible things that are incredible. Ghosts, murders, and bigamies, living burials, exhumations, and pushing-your-sweetheart’s-husband-over-precipices, are events which happen every moment, which you may number among the sights you witness every time you take your walks abroad, and are therefore fit subjects for novel-writers to deal with. But that any young lady, calling herself a lady, could act——
Oh! Eugenio!—thou whom I have apostrophised so often, and may now publish thee no myth, but rather my bosom friend—thou knowest I am writing true history; that Theresa did so receive me; that I did so undeceive her; that she did drop her nonsense, and become on a sudden a charming English lady, whom it was a rapture to look at, and a joy to listen to.
“Teazer,” said I——
Here I halted, coughed, and said, “Have you any objection to my calling you by this familiar name?”
“Certainly not. My behaviour yesterday privileges you to find me an uglier title.”
“It hits her character, doesn’t it?” exclaimed her father. “I gave it her, and she shall wear it as long as she deserves it.”
“I was going to ask you,” said I, “to give me a proof of your pistolling powers.”
“Make her give up that nonsense, Charlie,” remarked my uncle.
“It is harmless enough,” I replied.