not a black-eyed beauty of a Spaniard, ye little devil of
Seville!' says he." This she had occasionally confided to the ladies.
The marital eulogy had touched her, and she was not a woman of
coldly-flowing blood, she had an excuse for the constant employment of
the fan.

"And well, Mr. Paricles! have ye got nothin' to tell us about foreign
countesses and their slips? Because, we can listen, sir, garls or not.
Sure, if they understand ye, ye teach 'em nothin'; and if they don't
understand ye, where's the harm done? D'ye see, sir? It's clear in
favour of talkin'."

Mr. Pericles administered consolation to his moustache by twisting it
into long waxy points. "I do not know; I do not know," he put her away
with, from time to time. In the end Mrs. Chump leaned over to Arabella.
"Don't have 'm, my dear," she murmured.

"You mean--?" quoth Arabella.

"Here's the driest stick that aver stood without sap."

Arabella flushed when she took the implication that she was looking on
the man as a husband. Adela heard the remarks, and flushed likewise.
Mrs. Chump eyed them both. "It's for the money o' the man," she
soliloquized aloud, as her fashion was. Adela jumped up, and with
an easy sprightly posture of her fair, commonly studious person, and
natural run of notes "Oh!" she cried, "I begin to feel what it is to be
like a live fish on the fire, frying, frying, frying! and if he can keep
his Christian sentiments under this infliction, what a wonderful hero he
must be! What a hot day!"

She moved swiftly to the door, and flung it open. A sight met her eyes
at which she lost her self-possession. She started back, uttering a soft
cry.

"Ah! aha! oh!" went the bitter ironic drawl of Mr. Pericles, whose sharp
glance had caught the scene as well.

Emilia came forward with a face like sunset. Diplomacy, under the form
of Wilfrid Pole, kicked its heels behind, and said a word or two in a
tone of false cheerfulness.

"Oh! so!" Mr. Pericles frowned, while Emilia held her hand out to him.
"Yeas! You are quite well? H'm! You are burnt like a bean--hein? I shall
ask you what you have been doing, by and by."

Happily for decency, Mrs. Chump had not participated in the fact
presented by ocular demonstration. She turned about comfortably to greet
Wilfrid, uttering the inspired remark: "Ye look red from a sly kiss!"

"For one?" said he, sharpening his blunted wits on this dull instrument.

The ladies talked down their talk. Then Wilfrid