“I say, Sam my boy!” cried, in the midst of our talk, Mr. Roundhand, who had been passing the port-wine round pretty freely, “I hope you looked to the main chance, and put in a few shares of the West Diddlesex,—­hey?”

“Mr. Roundhand, have you put up the decanters downstairs?” cries the lady, quite angry, and wishing to stop the conversation.

“No, Milly, I’ve emptied ’em,” says R.

“Don’t Milly me, sir! and have the goodness to go down and tell Lancy my maid” (a look at me) “to make the tea in the study.  We have a gentleman here who is not used to Pentonville ways” (another look); “but he won’t mind the ways of friends.”  And here Mrs. Roundhand heaved her very large chest, and gave me a third look that was so severe, that I declare to goodness it made me look quite foolish.  As to Gus, she never so much as spoke to him all the evening; but he consoled himself with a great lot of muffins, and sat most of the evening (it was a cruel hot summer) whistling and talking with Roundhand on the verandah.  I think I should like to have been with them,—­for it was very close in the room with that great big Mrs. Roundhand squeezing close up to one on the sofa.

“Do you recollect what a jolly night we had here last summer?” I heard Hoskins say, who was leaning over the balcony, and ogling the girls coming home from church.  “You and me with our coats off, plenty of cold rum-and-water, Mrs. Roundhand at Margate, and a whole box of Manillas?”

“Hush!” said Roundhand, quite eagerly; “Milly will hear.”

But Milly didn’t hear:  for she was occupied in telling me an immense long story about her waltzing with the Count de Schloppenzollern at the City ball to the Allied Sovereigns; and how the Count had great large white moustaches; and how odd she thought it to go whirling round the room with a great man’s arm round your waist.  “Mr. Roundhand has never allowed it since our marriage—­never; but in the year ’fourteen it was considered a proper compliment, you know, to pay the sovereigns.  So twenty-nine young ladies, of the best families in the City of London, I assure you, Mr. Titmarsh—­there was the Lord Mayor’s own daughters; Alderman Dobbins’s gals; Sir Charles Hopper’s three, who have the great house in Baker Street; and your humble servant, who was rather slimmer in those days—­twenty-nine of us had a dancing-master on purpose, and practised waltzing in a room over the Egyptian Hall at the Mansion House.  He was a splendid man, that Count Schloppenzollern!”

“I am sure, ma’am,” says I, “he had a splendid partner!” and blushed up to my eyes when I said it.

“Get away, you naughty creature!” says Mrs. Roundhand, giving me a great slap:  “you’re all the same, you men in the West End—­all deceivers.  The Count was just like you.  Heigho!  Before you marry, it’s all honey and compliments; when you win us, it’s all coldness and indifference.  Look at Roundhand, the great baby, trying to beat down a butterfly with his yellow bandanna!  Can a man like that comprehend me? can he fill the void in my heart?” (She pronounced it without the h; but that there should be no mistake, laid her hand upon the place meant.) “Ah, no!  Will you be so neglectful when you marry, Mr. Titmarsh?”