m.'

'Oh, what happiness!' exclaimed Miss Podsnap.

'But do you know, my Georgiana,' Mrs Lammle resumed presently, 'that
there is something suspicious in your enthusiastic sympathy with
Alfred's tenderness?'

'Good gracious no, I hope not!'

'Doesn't it rather suggest,' said Mrs Lammle archly, 'that my
Georgiana's little heart is--'

'Oh don't!' Miss Podsnap blushingly besought her. 'Please don't! I
assure you, Sophronia, that I only praise Alfred, because he is your
husband and so fond of you.'

Sophronia's glance was as if a rather new light broke in upon her. It
shaded off into a cool smile, as she said, with her eyes upon her lunch,
and her eyebrows raised:

'You are quite wrong, my love, in your guess at my meaning. What I
insinuated was, that my Georgiana's little heart was growing conscious
of a vacancy.'

'No, no, no,' said Georgiana. 'I wouldn't have anybody say anything to
me in that way for I don't know how many thousand pounds.'

'In what way, my Georgiana?' inquired Mrs Lammle, still smiling coolly
with her eyes upon her lunch, and her eyebrows raised.

'YOU know,' returned poor little Miss Podsnap. 'I think I should go out
of my mind, Sophronia, with vexation and shyness and detestation, if
anybody did. It's enough for me to see how loving you and your husband
are. That's a different thing. I couldn't bear to have anything of that
sort going on with myself. I should beg and pray to--to have the person
taken away and trampled upon.'

Ah! here was Alfred. Having stolen in unobserved, he playfully leaned on
the back of Sophronia's chair, and, as Miss Podsnap saw him, put one
of Sophronia's wandering locks to his lips, and waved a kiss from it
towards Miss Podsnap.

'What is this about husbands and detestations?' inquired the captivating
Alfred.

'Why, they say,' returned his wife, 'that listeners never hear any good
of themselves; though you--but pray how long have you been here, sir?'

'This instant arrived, my own.'

'Then I may go on--though if you had been here but a moment or two
sooner, you would have heard your praises sounded by Georgiana.'

'Only, if they were to be called praises at all which I really don't
think they were,' explained Miss Podsnap in a flutter, 'for being so
devoted to Sophronia.'

'Sophronia!' murmured Alfred. 'My life!' and kissed her hand. In return
for which she kissed his watch-chain.

'But it was not I who was to be taken away and trampled upon, I hope?