FullReads

GEORGE [quite pleased].–What would you give him, god-papa?

TOUCHIT.–I would give him as sound a flogging as ever boy had, my darling. I would whip this nonsense out of him. I would send him to school, where I would pray that he might be well thrashed: and if when he came home he was still ashamed of his father, I would put him apprentice to a chimney-sweep–that’s what I would do.

GEORGE.–I’m glad you’re not my father, that’s all.

BELLA.–And I’M glad you’re not my father, because you are a wicked man!

MILLIKEN.–Arabella!

BELLA.–Grandmamma says so. He is a worldly man, and the world is wicked. And he goes to the play: and he smokes, and he says–

TOUCHIT.–Bella, what do I say?

BELLA.–Oh, something dreadful! You know you do! I heard you say it to the cabman.

TOUCHIT.–So I did, so I did! He asked me fifteen shillings from Piccadilly, and I told him to go to–to somebody whose name begins with a D.

CHILDREN.–Here’s another carriage passing.

BELLA.–The Lady Rumble’s carriage.

GEORGE.–No, it ain’t: it’s Captain Boxer’s carriage [they run into the garden].

TOUCHIT.–And this is the pass to which you have brought yourself, Horace Milliken! Why, in your wife’s time, it was better than this, my poor fellow!

MILLIKEN.–Don’t speak of her in THAT way, George Touchit!

TOUCHIT.–What have I said? I am only regretting her loss for our sake. She tyrannized over you; turned your friends out of doors; took your name out of your clubs; dragged you about from party to party, though you can no more dance than a bear, and from opera to opera, though you don’t know “God Save the Queen” from “Rule Britannia.” You don’t, sir; you know you don’t. But Arabella was better than her mother, who has taken possession of you since your widowhood.

MILLIKEN.–My dear fellow! no, she hasn’t. There’s MY mother.

TOUCHIT.–Yes, to be sure, there’s Mrs. Bonnington, and they quarrel over you like the two ladies over the baby before King Solomon.

MILLIKEN.–Play the satirist, my good friend! laugh at my weakness!

TOUCHIT.–I know you to be as plucky a fellow as ever stepped, Milliken, when a man’s in the case. I know you and I stood up to each other for an hour and a half at Westminster.

MILLIKEN.–Thank you! We were both dragons of war! tremendous champions! Perhaps I am a little soft as regards women. I know my weakness well enough; but in my case what is my remedy? Put yourself in my position. Be a widower with two young children. What is more natural than that the mother of my poor wife should come and superintend my family? My own mother can’t. She has a half-dozen of little half brothers and sisters, and a husband of her own to attend to. I dare say Mr. Bonnington and my mother will come to dinner to-day.

TOUCHIT.–Of course they will, my poor old Milliken, you don’t dare to dine without them.

MILLIKEN.–Don’t go on in that manner, George Touchit! Why should not my step-father and my mother dine with me? I can afford it. I am a domestic man and like to see my relations about me. I am in the city all day.

TOUCHIT.–Luckily for you.

MILLIKEN.–And my pleasure of an evening is to sit under my own vine and under my own fig-tree with my own olive-branches round about me; to sit by my fire with my children at my knees: to coze over a snug bottle of claret after dinner with a friend like you to share it; to see the young folks at the breakfast-table of a morning, and to kiss them and so off to business with a cheerful heart. This was my scheme in marrying, had it pleased heaven to prosper my plan. When I was a boy and came from school and college, I used to see Mr. Bonnington, my father-in-law, with HIS young ones clustering round about him, so happy to be with him! so eager to wait on him! all down on their little knees round my mother before breakfast or jumping up on his after dinner. It was who should reach his hat, and who should bring his coat, and who should fetch his umbrella, and who should get the last kiss.