A Likely Story

by William De Morgan

"She what's?"

"Hooks it, don't you know! Well, when she runs away, and you come across her, and you know all the story about the shindy, being in the beggar's confidence, don't you see?—and she knows you know it, only, mind you, there's nothing exactly to swear by, and you know she knows you know it, and she knows you know she knows—up and down and in and out—intersectitiously, don't you see...?" But the heroic effort to express a situation we have all had a try at and failed over was too much for Mr. Adolphus, and his sentence remained unfinished. Consider that he had supplied an entirely new word, and be lenient!

"Want'n'er for yourself, Dolly?" said that frivolous, superficial beast, Bob. "Don't you, that's my advice! She's a head and shoulders taller than you. You'll look such an ass!" Whereupon Mr. Adolphus, not without dignity, checked his brother's ill-timed humour, pointing out that he had done nothing to deserve the imputation of personal motives, and hinting that his well-known monastic bias should have saved him from it.

"Very well, then!—let her alone!" said Bob.

"But it's very embarrassing, you must admit," said Dolly.

"H'm!—don't see why."

"The position is a delicate one."

"Can't see where the delicacy comes in. You keep out of her way. She won't tackle you."

This was just about the time when the disengagement of their fleeces had enabled a congestion of the flock to pass on towards the lecture-hall, leaving access clear to Miss Priscilla, her niece, and others. Euphemia's fleece was one that gave trouble; she said it always got hooked. It certainly did so this time, and Mr. Adolphus, passing on after his colloquy with his brother, was able to render squire's service, unhooking it as bold as brass. Whereupon the lady and her aunt gushed gratefully, as in return for life saved. Their rescuer passed on, feeling internally gratified, and that he had shown presence of mind at a crisis—was, in short, a Man of the World. But he did not know that from thenceforward he was entangled in a certain perverse enchantment—a sort of spell that constantly impelled him to dally with the delicate position he was so conscious about. He must needs go and stick himself four seats off Mrs. Aiken, in the two-shilling places, the intervening three seats being vacant.

Now, if only lean men, operating edgewise, had attempted to pass into these seats, things might have gone otherwise. Fate sent a lady over three feet thick all the way down, and apparently quite solid, to wedge her way into one or more of these seats. Mr. Adolphus shrank, for all he was worth, but it was a trying moment. The lady was just that sort the Inquisition once employed so successfully; one with spikes, that drew blood from anyone that got agglutinated with her costume. She might, however, have got through without accident—you never can tell!—if the trial had been carried out. It was suspended by a suggestion from Mrs. Aiken that Mr. Adolphus Groob should come a little farther along and make room; and when he complied, to the extent of going one seat nearer to her, a second suggestion that he should come nearer still, to which he assented with trepidation. Resistance was useless. A galaxy of daughters had already filled in the whole row behind the stout lady, and were forcing her on like the air-tight piece of potato in a quill popgun, only larger. So in the end Mr. Adolphus Groob found himself wedged securely between the stout lady and Mrs. Euphemia Aiken, quite unable to speak to the former, for though they had certainly met—with a vengeance—they had never been introduced. This really was a very delicate position. Mrs. Aiken might at least have said, "You know Mrs. Godfrey Pybus, I think?" That was the stout lady's name. Then he could have avoided talking with Mrs. Aiken, by becoming absorbed in Mrs. Pybus, and shouting round her to her nearest daughters beyond. As it was, he was fairly forced to make careful remarks to his other neighbour, scrupulously avoiding allusion to husbands, wives, quarrels, Studios, Chelsea, London, servant-girls, picture-cleaning ... this is only a handful at random of the things it would never do to mention in such delicate circumstances. He held his tongue discreetly about every one of these in turn, and talked of little but the weather.