“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—”