“Why, that is the very point, Sophronia, that Georgiana and I were discussing as to herself! What did Fledgeby say?”
“Oh, a likely thing, sir, that I am going to tell you everything, and be told nothing! What did Georgiana say?”
“Georgiana said she was doing her usual justice to herself today, and I said she was not.”
“Precisely,” exclaimed Mrs. Lammle, “what I said to Mr. Fledgeby.” Still, it wouldn’t do. They would not look at one another. No, not even when the sparkling host proposed that the quartette should take an appropriately sparkling glass of wine. Georgiana looked from her wine glass at Mr. Lammle and at Mrs. Lammle; but mightn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t, wouldn’t, look at Mr. Fledgeby. Fascination looked from his wine glass at Mrs. Lammle and at Mr. Lammle; but mightn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t, wouldn’t, look at Georgiana.
More prompting was necessary. Cupid must be brought up to the mark. The manager had put him down in the bill for the part, and he must play it.
“Sophronia, my dear,” said Mr. Lammle, “I don’t like the colour of your dress.”
“I appeal,” said Mrs. Lammle, “to Mr. Fledgeby.”
“And I,” said Mr. Lammle, “to Georgiana.”
“Georgy, my love,” remarked Mrs. Lammle aside to her dear girl, “I rely upon you not to go over to the opposition. Now, Mr. Fledgeby.”
Fascination wished to know if the colour were not called rose-colour? Yes, said Mr. Lammle; actually he knew everything; it was really rose-colour. Fascination took rose-colour to mean the colour of roses. (In this he was very warmly supported by Mr. and Mrs. Lammle.) Fascination had heard the term Queen of Flowers applied to the rose. Similarly, it might be said that the dress was the Queen of Dresses. (“Very happy, Fledgeby!” from Mr. Lammle.) Notwithstanding, Fascination’s opinion was that we all had our eyes—or at least a large majority of us—and that—and—and his farther opinion was several ands, with nothing beyond them.
“Oh, Mr. Fledgeby,” said Mrs. Lammle, “to desert me in that way! Oh, Mr. Fledgeby, to abandon my poor dear injured rose and declare for blue!”
“Victory, victory!” cried Mr. Lammle; “your dress is condemned, my dear.”
“But what,” said Mrs. Lammle, stealing her affectionate hand towards her dear girl’s, “what does Georgy say?”
“She says,” replied Mr. Lammle, interpreting for her, “that in her eyes you look well in any colour, Sophronia, and that if she had expected to be embarrassed by so pretty a compliment as she has received, she would have worn another colour herself. Though I tell her, in reply, that it would not have saved her, for whatever colour she had worn would have been Fledgeby’s colour. But what does Fledgeby say?”
“He says,” replied Mrs. Lammle, interpreting for him, and patting the back of her dear girl’s hand, as if it were Fledgeby who was patting it, “that it was no compliment, but a little natural act of homage that he couldn’t resist. And,” expressing more feeling as if it were more feeling on the part of Fledgeby, “he is right, he is right!”
Still, no not even now, would they look at one another. Seeming to gnash his sparkling teeth, studs, eyes, and buttons, all at once, Mr. Lammle secretly bent a dark frown on the two, expressive of an intense desire to bring them together by knocking their heads together.
“Have you heard this opera of tonight, Fledgeby?” he asked, stopping very short, to prevent himself from running on into “confound you.”
“Why no, not exactly,” said Fledgeby. “In fact I don’t know a note of it.”
“Neither do you know it, Georgy?” said Mrs. Lammle. “N-no,” replied Georgiana, faintly, under the sympathetic coincidence.
“Why, then,” said Mrs. Lammle, charmed by the discovery which flowed from the premises, “you neither of you know it! How charming!”
Even the craven Fledgeby felt that the time was now come when he must strike a blow. He struck it by saying, partly to Mrs. Lammle and partly to the circumambient air, “I consider myself very fortunate in being reserved by—”
As he stopped dead, Mr. Lammle, making that gingerous bush of his whiskers to look out of, offered him the word “Destiny.”
“No, I wasn’t going to say that,” said Fledgeby. “I was going to say Fate. I consider it very fortunate that Fate has written in the book of—in the book which is its own property—that I should go to that opera for the first time under the memorable circumstances of going with Miss Podsnap.”
To which Georgiana replied, hooking her two little fingers in one another, and addressing the tablecloth, “Thank you, but I generally go with no one but you, Sophronia, and I like that very much.”
Content perforce with this success for the time, Mr. Lammle let Miss Podsnap out of the room, as if he were opening her cage door, and Mrs. Lammle followed. Coffee being presently served upstairs, he kept a watch on Fledgeby until Miss Podsnap’s cup was empty, and then directed him with his finger (as if that young gentleman were a slow Retriever) to go and fetch it. This feat he performed, not only without failure, but even with the original embellishment of informing Miss Podsnap that green tea was considered bad for the nerves. Though there Miss Podsnap unintentionally threw him out by faltering, “Oh, is it indeed? How does it act?” Which he was not prepared to elucidate.
The carriage announced, Mrs. Lammle said; “Don’t mind me, Mr. Fledgeby, my skirts and cloak occupy both my hands, take Miss Podsnap.” And he took her, and Mrs. Lammle went next, and Mr. Lammle went last, savagely following his little flock, like a drover.
But he was all sparkle and glitter in the box at the Opera, and there he and his dear wife made a conversation between Fledgeby and Georgiana in the following ingenious and skilful manner. They sat in this order: Mrs. Lammle, Fascination Fledgeby, Georgiana, Mr. Lammle. Mrs. Lammle made leading remarks to Fledgeby, only requiring monosyllabic replies.
