“Oh, my children! Is this the way you dwell together in unity?” exclaims their excellent female parent, laying down her embroidery. “What an example you set to this Innocent!”
“Like to see 'em fight, my lady!” cries the Innocent, rubbing his hands.
“At her, Flora! Worry her, Dora! To it again, you little rogues!” says facetious papa. “'Tis good sport, ain't it, Miley?”
“Oh, Sir Miles! Oh, my children! These disputes are unseemly. They tear a fond mother's heart,” says mamma, with majestic action, though bearing the laceration of her bosom with much seeming equanimity. “What cause for thankfulness ought we to have that watchful parents have prevented any idle engagements between you and your misguided cousin. If we have been mistaken in him, is it not a mercy that we have found out our error in time? If either of you had any preference for him, your excellent good sense, my loves, will teach you to overcome, to eradicate, the vain feeling. That we cherished and were kind to him can never be a source of regret. 'Tis a proof of our good-nature. What we have to regret, I fear, is, that your cousin should have proved unworthy of our kindness, and, coming away from the society of gamblers, play-actors, and the like, should have brought contamination—pollution, I had almost said—into this pure family!”
“Oh, bother mamma's sermons!” says Flora, as my lady pursues a harangue of which we only give the commencement here, but during which papa, whistling, gently quits the room on tiptoe, whilst the artless Miles junior winds his top and pegs it under the robes of his sisters. It has done humming, and staggered and tumbled over, and expired in its usual tipsy manner, long ere Lady Warrington has finished her sermon.
“Were you listening to me, my child?” she asks, laying her hand on her darling's head.
“Yes, mother,” says he, with the whipcord in his mouth, and proceeding to wind up his sportive engine. “You was a-saying that Harry was very poor now, and that we oughtn't to help him. That's what you was saying; wasn't it, madam?”
“My poor child, thou wilt understand me better when thou art older!” says mamma, turning towards that ceiling to which her eyes always have recourse.
“Get out, you little wretch!” cries one of the sisters. The artless one has pegged his top at Dora's toes, and laughs with the glee of merry boyhood at his sister's discomfiture.
But what is this? Who comes here? Why does Sir Miles return to the drawing-room, and why does Tom Claypool, who strides after the Baronet, wear a countenance so disturbed?