“My dear Mr. Podsnap, it’s very foolish I know, but I have an instinctive presentiment that if Hamilton gave away anybody else first, he would never give away baby.” Thus Mrs. Veneering; with her open hands pressed together, and each of her eight aquiline fingers looking so very like her one aquiline nose that the bran-new jewels on them seem necessary for distinction’s sake.

“But, my dear Podsnap,” quoth Veneering, “there is a tried friend of our family who, I think and hope you will agree with me, Podsnap, is the friend on whom this agreeable duty almost naturally devolves. That friend,” saying the words as if the company were about a hundred and fifty in number, “is now among us. That friend is Twemlow.”

“Certainly!” from Podsnap.