Charles Dickens' Most Influential Works (Illustrated). Charles Dickens

any more, Georgiana.’

      ‘Oh! Alfred, then. I am glad it’s no worse. I was afraid I had said something shocking. I am always saying something wrong to ma.’

      ‘To me, Georgiana dearest?’

      ‘No, not to you; you are not ma. I wish you were.’

      Mrs Lammle bestowed a sweet and loving smile upon her friend, which Miss Podsnap returned as she best could. They sat at lunch in Mrs Lammle’s own boudoir.

      ‘And so, dearest Georgiana, Alfred is like your notion of a lover?’

      ‘I don’t say that, Sophronia,’ Georgiana replied, beginning to conceal her elbows. ‘I haven’t any notion of a lover. The dreadful wretches that ma brings up at places to torment me, are not lovers. I only mean that Mr—’

      ‘Again, dearest Georgiana?’

      ‘That Alfred—’

      ‘Sounds much better, darling.’

      ‘—Loves you so. He always treats you with such delicate gallantry and attention. Now, don’t he?’

      ‘Truly, my dear,’ said Mrs Lammle, with a rather singular expression crossing her face. ‘I believe that he loves me, fully as much as I love him.’

      ‘Oh, what happiness!’ exclaimed Miss Podsnap.

      ‘But do you know, my Georgiana,’ Mrs Lammle resumed presently, ‘that there is something suspicious in your enthusiastic sympathy with Alfred’s tenderness?’

      ‘Good gracious no, I hope not!’

      ‘Doesn’t it rather suggest,’ said Mrs Lammle archly, ‘that my Georgiana’s little heart is—’

      ‘Oh don’t!’ Miss Podsnap blushingly besought her. ‘Please don’t! I assure you, Sophronia, that I only praise Alfred, because he is your husband and so fond of you.’

      Sophronia’s glance was as if a rather new light broke in upon her. It shaded off into a cool smile, as she said, with her eyes upon her lunch, and her eyebrows raised:

      ‘You are quite wrong, my love, in your guess at my meaning. What I insinuated was, that my Georgiana’s little heart was growing conscious of a vacancy.’

      ‘No, no, no,’ said Georgiana. ‘I wouldn’t have anybody say anything to me in that way for I don’t know how many thousand pounds.’

      ‘In what way, my Georgiana?’ inquired Mrs Lammle, still smiling coolly with her eyes upon her lunch, and her eyebrows raised.

      ‘You know,’ returned poor little Miss Podsnap. ‘I think I should go out of my mind, Sophronia, with vexation and shyness and detestation, if anybody did. It’s enough for me to see how loving you and your husband are. That’s a different thing. I couldn’t bear to have anything of that sort going on with myself. I should beg and pray to—to have the person taken away and trampled upon.’

      Ah! here was Alfred. Having stolen in unobserved, he playfully leaned on the back of Sophronia’s chair, and, as Miss Podsnap saw him, put one of Sophronia’s wandering locks to his lips, and waved a kiss from it towards Miss Podsnap.

      ‘What is this about husbands and detestations?’ inquired the captivating Alfred.

      ‘Why, they say,’ returned his wife, ‘that listeners never hear any good of themselves; though you—but pray how long have you been here, sir?’

      ‘This instant arrived, my own.’

      ‘Then I may go on—though if you had been here but a moment or two sooner, you would have heard your praises sounded by Georgiana.’

      ‘Only, if they were to be called praises at all which I really don’t think they were,’ explained Miss Podsnap in a flutter, ‘for being so devoted to Sophronia.’

      ‘Sophronia!’ murmured Alfred. ‘My life!’ and kissed her hand. In return for which she kissed his watch-chain.

      ‘But it was not I who was to be taken away and trampled upon, I hope?’ said Alfred, drawing a seat between them.

      ‘Ask Georgiana, my soul,’ replied his wife.

      Alfred touchingly appealed to Georgiana.

      ‘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 any one 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 up-stairs 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 to-morrow and goes to the Opera with us. That’s all. Except, my dear Georgiana—and what will you think