Part 7 (2/2)
Amos thanked her, and listened with due decorum to a good deal of small talk on the old lady's part till dinner was announced, when she so contrived that he should take her daughter down and sit between them.
Walter was seated just opposite his brother, full of life and fun, as he threw off his gay remarks now on this side and now on that. Suddenly he looked across at Amos, and something in the situation of his brother between the old lady and her daughter struck him as so irresistibly funny, that it was with the utmost difficulty that he restrained himself from a violent outburst of laughter. And, certainly, to one easily moved to merriment there was something singularly quaint and almost comic in the contrast between the subdued but courteous manner of Amos, who was patiently endeavouring to make himself agreeable to his two immediate neighbours, and the excited frivolity of Miss Morse's running fire of worldly commonplaces, occasionally interrupted by her mother's more staid utterances of a similar character.
Walter thoroughly comprehended the situation, and the reason why such pains were being taken to draw out his brother; and his satisfaction and amus.e.m.e.nt were unbounded at the manifest failure of the effort. The old lady caught Walter's eye, and divining somewhat of the cause of its merry twinkle, coloured, and was silent. Her daughter also looked uneasily across the table, and then exclaimed,--
”Were you at Lady Gambit's garden-party last Tuesday, Mr Walter?”
”No,” he replied; ”I was not there.”
”Then I can tell you that you missed a treat,” said the other.
”Why, what was the special attraction?” he asked.
”Oh, everything that you can imagine!”
”Well, I can imagine so many things,” said Walter laughing, ”that I am quite sure her ladys.h.i.+p's garden could never have held them all. Pray, tell me what you yourself thought _the_ attraction _par excellence_.”
”Yes, I can do that. You know these garden-parties are generally rather dull affairs after all.”
”What! with those numberless attractions?”
”Yes; one gets weary of them. You know, go where you will, it's the same thing over and over again.”
”But it seems that it was not so in this case.”
”No, it was not. Her ladys.h.i.+p, no doubt, wished to make a little variety, and so she was good enough to provide us with something new.”
”Dear me!” cried Walter; ”how I should have liked being there! What was the novelty? Was it a temperance lecture, or a Band of Hope meeting for the benefit of the old boys and girls of sixty or seventy years of age?
That must have been very lively. Or perhaps it was a Protestant address against nunneries and monasteries. My brother Amos would have liked to have had a word on that subject.”
”No, no, Mr Walter; you must not be foolish.”
”Well, do tell me. I am all anxiety to know what this attractive novelty was. Not a conjurer? that would have been capital fun.”
”No, not a conjurer exactly.”
”Well, then, something of the sort?”
”Yes; Lady Gambit had engaged a celebrated mimic--a man, I mean, who can take off other people to the life.”
”Indeed,” said Walter. ”Perhaps it might have been as well if he had taken himself off. But, excuse my nonsense; what did he mimic?”
”Oh, all sorts of funny people. We all gathered round him under the great sycamore tree, and he kept us in peals of laughter for an hour.”
”Tell me, please, some of the characters he took off.”
”I can remember two especially. One of them was a drunkard, and the other was a hypocrite. In taking off the drunkard he called himself 'Mr Adolphus Swillerly.' You never heard anything more amusing in your life.”
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