“De te fabula,” says the actor. “I think it is your waistcoat that is saucy. Madam, shall I make some punch in the way we make it in Ireland?”
The Doctor, puffing, and purple in the face, was wiping the dingy shirt with a still more dubious pocket-handkerchief, which he then applied to his forehead. After this exercise, he blew a hyperborean whistle, as if to blow his wrath away. “It is de me, sir—though, as a young man, perhaps you need not have told me so.”
“I drop my point, sir! If you have been wrong, I am sure I am bound to ask your pardon for setting you so!” says Mr. Hagan, with a fine bow.
“Doesn't he look like a god?” says Maria, clutching my wife's hand: and indeed Mr. Hagan did look like a handsome young gentleman. His colour had risen; he had put his hand to his breast with a noble air: Chamont or Castalio could not present himself better.
“Let me make you some lemonade, sir; my papa has sent us a box of fresh limes. May we send you some to the Temple?”
“Madam, if they stay in your house, they will lose their quality and turn sweet,” says the Doctor. “Mr. Hagan, you are a young sauce-box, that's what you are! Ho! ho! It is I have been wrong.”
“Oh, my lord, my Polidore!” bleats Lady Maria, when she was alone in my wife's drawing-room:
“'Oh, I could hear thee talk for ever thus,
Eternally admiring,—fix and gaze
On those dear eyes, for every glance they send
Darts through my soul, and fills my heart with rapture!'
“Thou knowest not, my Theo, what a pearl and paragon of a man my Castalio is; my Chamont, my—oh, dear me, child, what a pity it is that in your husband's tragedy he should have to take the horrid name of Captain Smith!”
Upon this tragedy not only my literary hopes, but much of my financial prospects were founded. My brother's debts discharged, my mother's drafts from home duly honoured, my own expenses paid, which, though moderate, were not inconsiderable,—pretty nearly the whole of my patrimony had been spent, and this auspicious moment I must choose for my marriage! I could raise money on my inheritance: that was not impossible, though certainly costly. My mother could not leave her eldest son without a maintenance, whatever our quarrels might be. I had health, strength, good wits, some friends, and reputation—above all, my famous tragedy, which the manager had promised to perform, and upon the proceeds of this I counted for my present support. What becomes of the arithmetic of youth? How do we then calculate that a hundred pounds is a maintenance, and a thousand a fortune? How did I dare play against Fortune with such odds? I succeeded, I remember, in convincing my dear General, and he left home convinced that his son-in-law had for the present necessity at least a score of hundred pounds at his command. He and his dear Molly had begun life with less, and the ravens had somehow always fed them. As for the women, the question of poverty was one of pleasure to those sentimental souls, and Aunt Lambert, for her part, declared it would be wicked and irreligious to doubt of a provision being made for her children. Was the righteous ever forsaken? Did the just man ever have to beg his bread? She knew better than that! “No, no, my dears! I am not going to be afraid on that account, I warrant you! Look at me and my General!”