'
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 say