“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 arms’ length, sometimes near together and sometimes wide apart, went on:
“You must know, you dearly beloved little goose, that once upon a time there was a certain person called young Fledgeby. And this young Fledgeby, who was of an excellent family and rich, was known to two other certain persons, dearly attached to one another and called Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Lammle. So this young Fledgeby, being one night at the play, there sees with Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Lammle, a certain heroine called—”
“No, don’t say Georgiana Podsnap!” pleaded that young lady almost in tears. “Please don’t. Oh do do do say somebody else! Not Georgiana Podsnap. Oh don’t, don’t, don’t!”
“No other,” said Mrs. Lammle, laughing airily, and, full of affectionate blandishments, opening and closing Georgiana’s arms like a pair of compasses, “than my little Georgiana Podsnap. So this young Fledgeby goes to that Alfred Lammle and says—”
“Oh ple-e-e-ease don’t!” Georgiana, as if the supplication were being squeezed out of her by powerful compression. “I so hate him for saying it!”
“For saying what, my dear?” laughed Mrs. Lammle.
“Oh, I don’t know what he said,” cried Georgiana wildly, “but I hate him all the same for saying it.”
“My dear,” said Mrs. Lammle, always laughing in her most captivating way, “the poor young fellow only says that he is stricken all of a heap.”
“Oh, what shall I ever do!” interposed Georgiana. “Oh my goodness what a fool he must be!”
“—And implores to be asked to dinner, and to make a fourth at the play another time. And so he dines tomorrow and goes to the opera with us. That’s all. Except, my dear Georgiana—and what will you think of this!—that he is infinitely shyer than you, and far more afraid of you than you ever were of anyone in all your days!”
In perturbation of mind Miss Podsnap still fumed and plucked at her hands a little, but could not help laughing at the notion of anybody’s being afraid of her. With that advantage, Sophronia flattered her and rallied her more successfully, and then the insinuating Alfred flattered her and rallied her, and promised that at any moment when she might require that service at his hands, he would take young Fledgeby out and trample on him. Thus it remained amicably understood that young Fledgeby was to come to admire, and that Georgiana was to come to be admired; and Georgiana with the entirely new sensation in her breast of having that prospect before her, and with many kisses from her dear Sophronia in present possession, preceded six feet one of discontented footman (an amount of the article that always came for her when she walked home) to her father’s dwelling.
The happy pair being left together, Mrs. Lammle said to her husband:
“If I understand this girl, sir, your dangerous fascinations have produced some effect upon her. I mention the conquest in good time because I apprehend your scheme to be more important to you than your vanity.”
There was a mirror on the wall before them, and her eyes just caught him smirking in it. She gave the reflected image a look of the deepest disdain, and the image received it in the glass. Next moment they quietly eyed each other, as if they, the principals, had had no part in that expressive transaction.
It may have been that Mrs. Lammle tried in some manner to excuse her conduct to herself by depreciating the poor little victim of whom she spoke with acrimonious contempt. It may have been too that in this she did not quite succeed, for it is very difficult to resist confidence, and she knew she had Georgiana’s.
Nothing more was said between the happy pair. Perhaps conspirators who have once established an understanding, may not be overfond of repeating the terms and objects of their conspiracy. Next day came; came Georgiana; and came Fledgeby.
Georgiana had by this time seen a good deal of the house and its frequenters. As there was a certain handsome room with a billiard table in it—on the ground floor, eating out a backyard—which might have been Mr. Lammle’s office, or library, but was called by neither name, but simply Mr. Lammle’s room, so it would have been hard for stronger female heads than Georgiana’s to determine whether its frequenters were men of pleasure or men of business. Between the room and the men there were strong points of general resemblance. Both were too gaudy, too slangy, too odorous of cigars, and too much given to horseflesh; the latter characteristic being exemplified in the room by its decorations, and in the men by their conversation. High-stepping horses seemed necessary to all Mr. Lammle’s friends—as necessary as their transaction of business together in a gipsy way at untimely hours of the morning and evening, and in rushes and snatches. There were friends who seemed to be always coming and going across the Channel, on errands about the Bourse, and
