Little Dorrit, Charles Dickens [big ebook reader txt] 📗

hours; after which, she had arisen to see about her mourning, and to take every precaution that could ensure its being as becoming as Mrs. Merdle’s. A gloom was then cast over more than one distinguished family (according to the politest sources of intelligence), and the Courier went back again.

Mr. and Mrs. Sparkler had been dining alone, with their gloom cast over them, and Mrs. Sparkler reclined on a drawing-room sofa. It was a hot summer Sunday evening. The residence in the centre of the habitable globe, at all times stuffed and close as if it had an incurable cold in its head, was that evening particularly stifling. The bells of the churches had done their worst in the way of clanging among the unmelodious echoes of the streets, and the lighted windows of the churches had ceased to be yellow in the grey dusk, and had died out opaque black. Mrs. Sparkler, lying on her sofa, looking through an open window at the opposite side of a narrow street over boxes of mignonette and flowers, was tired of the view. Mrs. Sparkler, looking at another window where her husband stood in the balcony, was tired of that view. Mrs. Sparkler, looking at herself in her mourning, was even tired of that view: though, naturally, not so tired of that as of the other two.

“It’s like lying in a well,” said Mrs. Sparkler, changing her position fretfully. “Dear me, Edmund, if you have anything to say, why don’t you say it?”

Mr. Sparkler might have replied with ingenuousness, “My life, I have nothing to say.” But, as the repartee did not occur to him, he contented himself with coming in from the balcony and standing at the side of his wife’s couch.

“Good gracious, Edmund!” said Mrs. Sparkler more fretfully still, “you are absolutely putting mignonette up your nose! Pray don’t!”

Mr. Sparkler, in absence of mind⁠—perhaps in a more literal absence of mind than is usually understood by the phrase⁠—had smelt so hard at a sprig in his hand as to be on the verge of the offence in question. He smiled, said, “I ask your pardon, my dear,” and threw it out of window.

“You make my head ache by remaining in that position, Edmund,” said Mrs. Sparkler, raising her eyes to him after another minute; “you look so aggravatingly large by this light. Do sit down.”

“Certainly, my dear,” said Mr. Sparkler, and took a chair on the same spot.

“If I didn’t know that the longest day was past,” said Fanny, yawning in a dreary manner, “I should have felt certain this was the longest day. I never did experience such a day.”

“Is that your fan, my love?” asked Mr. Sparkler, picking up one and presenting it.

“Edmund,” returned his wife, more wearily yet, “don’t ask weak questions, I entreat you not. Whose can it be but mine?”

“Yes, I thought it was yours,” said Mr. Sparkler.

“Then you shouldn’t ask,” retorted Fanny. After a little while she turned on her sofa and exclaimed, “Dear me, dear me, there never was such a long day as this!” After another little while, she got up slowly, walked about, and came back again.

“My dear,” said Mr. Sparkler, flashing with an original conception, “I think you must have got the fidgets.”

“Oh, Fidgets!” repeated Mrs. Sparkler. “Don’t.”

“My adorable girl,” urged Mr. Sparkler, “try your aromatic vinegar. I have often seen my mother try it, and it seemingly refreshed her. And she is, as I believe you are aware, a remarkably fine woman, with no non⁠—”

“Good Gracious!” exclaimed Fanny, starting up again. “It’s beyond all patience! This is the most wearisome day that ever did dawn upon the world, I am certain.”

Mr. Sparkler looked meekly after her as she lounged about the room, and he appeared to be a little frightened. When she had tossed a few trifles about, and had looked down into the darkening street out of all the three windows, she returned to her sofa, and threw herself among its pillows.

“Now Edmund, come here! Come a little nearer, because I want to be able to touch you with my fan, that I may impress you very much with what I am going to say. That will do. Quite close enough. Oh, you do look so big!”

Mr. Sparkler apologised for the circumstance, pleaded that he couldn’t help it, and said that “our fellows,” without more particularly indicating whose fellows, used to call him by the name of Quinbus Flestrin, Junior, or the Young Man Mountain.

“You ought to have told me so before,” Fanny complained.

“My dear,” returned Mr. Sparkler, rather gratified, “I didn’t know it would interest you, or I would have made a point of telling you.”

“There! For goodness sake, don’t talk,” said Fanny; “I want to talk, myself. Edmund, we must not be alone any more. I must take such precautions as will prevent my being ever again reduced to the state of dreadful depression in which I am this evening.”

“My dear,” answered Mr. Sparkler; “being as you are well known to be, a remarkably fine woman with no⁠—”

“Oh, good gracious!” cried Fanny.

Mr. Sparkler was so discomposed by the energy of this exclamation, accompanied with a flouncing up from the sofa and a flouncing down again, that a minute or two elapsed before he felt himself equal to saying in explanation:

“I mean, my dear, that everybody knows you are calculated to shine in society.”

“Calculated to shine in society,” retorted Fanny with great irritability; “yes, indeed! And then what happens? I no sooner recover, in a visiting point of view, the shock of poor dear papa’s death, and my poor uncle’s⁠—though I do not disguise from myself that the last was a happy release, for, if you are not presentable you had much better die⁠—”

“You are not referring to me, my love, I hope?” Mr. Sparkler humbly interrupted.

“Edmund, Edmund, you would wear out a Saint. Am I not expressly speaking of my poor uncle?”

“You looked with so much expression at myself, my dear girl,” said Mr. Sparkler, “that I felt a little uncomfortable. Thank you, my love.”

“Now you have put me out,” observed Fanny with a resigned toss of her fan, “and I