Downstairs ran the boy with the
message, and down went the excited Hicks himself, almost as soon as the
message was delivered. 'Tap, tap.' 'Come in.'--Door opens, and
discovers Mr. Calton sitting in an easy chair. Mutual shakes of the hand
exchanged, and Mr. Septimus Hicks motioned to a seat. A short pause.
Mr. Hicks coughed, and Mr. Calton took a pinch of snuff. It was one of
those interviews where neither party knows what to say. Mr. Septimus
Hicks broke silence.

'I received a note--' he said, very tremulously, in a voice like a Punch
with a cold.

'Yes,' returned the other, 'you did.'

'Exactly.'

'Yes.'

Now, although this dialogue must have been satisfactory, both gentlemen
felt there was something more important to be said; therefore they did as
most men in such a situation would have done--they looked at the table
with a determined aspect. The conversation had been opened, however, and
Mr. Calton had made up his mind to continue it with a regular double
knock. He always spoke very pompously.

'Hicks,' said he, 'I have sent for you, in consequence of certain
arrangements which are pending in this house, connected with a marriage.'

'With a marriage!' gasped Hicks, compared with whose expression of
countenance, Hamlet's, when he sees his father's ghost, is pleasing and
composed.

'With a marriage,' returned the knocker. 'I have sent for you to prove
the great confidence I can repose in you.'

'And will you betray me?' eagerly inquired Hicks, who in his alarm had
even forgotten to quote.

'_I_ betray _you_! Won't _you_ betray_ me_?'

'Never: no one shall know, to my dying day, that you had a hand in the
business,' responded the agitated Hicks, with an inflamed countenance,
and his hair standing on end as if he were on the stool of an
electrifying machine in full operation.

'People must know that, some time or other--within a year, I imagine,'
said Mr. Calton, with an air of great self-complacency. 'We _may_ have
a family.'

'_We_!--That won't affect you, surely?'

'The devil it won't!'

'No! how can it?' said the bewildered Hicks. Calton was too much
inwrapped in the contemplation of his happiness to see the equivoque
between Hicks and himself; and threw himself back in his chair. 'Oh,
Matilda!' sighed the antique beau, in a lack-a-daisical voice, and
applying his right hand a little to the left of the fourth button of his
waistcoat, counting from the bottom. 'Oh, Matilda!'