“Oh, it was nobody,” replied Miss Podsnap. “It was nonsense.”
“But if you are determined to know, Mr. Inquisitive Pet, as I suppose you are,” said the happy and fond Sophronia, smiling, “it was anyone who should venture to aspire to Georgiana.”
“Sophronia, my love,” remonstrated Mr. Lammle, becoming graver, “you are not serious?”
“Alfred, my love,” returned his wife, “I dare say Georgiana was not, but I am.”
“Now this,” said Mr. Lammle, “shows the accidental combinations that there are in things! Could you believe, my Ownest, that I came in here with the name of an aspirant to our Georgiana on my lips?”
“Of course I could believe, Alfred,” said Mrs. Lammle, “anything that you told me.”
“You dear one! And I anything that you told me.”
How delightful those interchanges, and the looks accompanying them! Now, if the skeleton upstairs had taken that opportunity, for instance, of calling out “Here I am, suffocating in the closet!”
“I give you my honour, my dear Sophronia—”
“And I know what that is, love,” said she.
“You do, my darling—that I came into the room all but uttering young Fledgeby’s name. Tell Georgiana, dearest, about young Fledgeby.”
“Oh no, don’t! Please don’t!” cried Miss Podsnap, putting her fingers in her ears. “I’d rather not.”
Mrs. Lammle laughed in her gayest manner, and, removing her Georgiana’s unresisting hands, and playfully holding them in her own at