“Don’t mind me,” he sobbed, through his fingers; “I entreat—I implore that none of you will look at me.”
“Oh, my dear husband!” shrieked his wife, rushing up to him, and casting her arms around his neck.
“Oh, papa, papa!” cried Conny, likewise running up to him, casting herself on her knees and fondling his legs.
To complete the tableau nothing was wanting but for Mr. Curling and me to lock each other’s figure in a passionate embrace. But I would rather have been poisoned.
“There, there, there!” mumbled my poor uncle, releasing himself from his wife and child by struggling out of his chair. “I must apologise for my weakness. God knows how many years it is since I shed a tear. Charlie, my boy, pray be seated. Curling, raise your wife.”
However, Conny saved her husband this trouble by getting up herself. My aunt resumed her chair; Curling took the music-stool, and my uncle and I shared the sofa.
The silence that followed was exquisitely embarrassing. I gasped and gulped about in my mind for something to say, but was as absolutely vacant of ideas as a foolish and nervous “best man,” who rises to propose “the bridesmaids,” and can do nothing for a long and awful pause but fix a fishy eye on the person immediately opposite.
Conny never looked at me. Her swollen blue eyes were glued to the carpet. As for my aunt, her face was as stony and hard as anything ever found by Mr. Layard at Nineveh. At last, feeling the silence too oppressive for my nerves to endure without something cracking, I asked my uncle, in a voice that appeared to me fearfully loud,
“How is London looking?”
“Very much as usual,” he replied.