第142章

`So very kind of you to invite me, you mean, Sir Mulberry,' replied Mrs Nickleby, tossing her head, and looking prodigiously sly.

`I am so anxious to know you, so anxious to cultivate your good opinion, so desirous that there should be a delicious kind of harmonious family understanding between us,' said Sir Mulberry, `that you mustn't think I'm disinterested in what I do. I'm infernal selfish; I am--upon my soul Iam.'

`I am sure you can't be selfish, Sir Mulberry!' replied Mrs Nickleby.

`You have much too open and generous a countenance for that.'

`What an extraordinary observer you are!' said Sir Mulberry Hawk.

`Oh no, indeed, I don't see very far into things, Sir Mulberry,' replied Mrs Nickleby, in a tone of voice which left the baronet to infer that she saw very far indeed.

`I am quite afraid of you,' said the baronet. `Upon my soul,' repeated Sir Mulberry, looking round to his companions; `I am afraid of Mrs Nickleby.

She is so immensely sharp.'

Messrs Pyke and Pluck shook their heads mysteriously, and observed together that they had found that out long ago; upon which Mrs Nickleby tittered, and Sir Mulberry laughed, and Pyke and Pluck roared.

`But where's my brother-in-law, Sir Mulberry?' inquired Mrs Nickleby.

`I shouldn't be here without him. I hope he's coming.'

`Pyke,' said Sir Mulberry, taking out his toothpick and lolling back in his chair, as if he were too lazy to invent a reply to this question.

`Where's Ralph Nickleby?'

`Pluck,' said Pyke, imitating the baronet's action, and turning the lie over to his friend, `where's Ralph Nickleby?'

Mr Pluck was about to return some evasive reply, when the hustle caused by a party entering the next box seemed to attract the attention of all four gentlemen, who exchanged glances of much meaning. The new party beginning to converse together, Sir Mulberry suddenly assumed the character of a most attentive listener, and implored his friends not to breathe--not to breathe.

`Why not?' said Mrs Nickleby. `What is the matter?'

`Hush!' replied Sir Mulberry, laying his hand on her arm. `Lord Frederick, do you recognise the tones of that voice?'

`Deyvle take me if I didn't think it was the voice of Miss Nickleby.'

`Lor, my lord!' cried Miss Nickleby's mamma, thrusting her head round the curtain. `Why actually--Kate, my dear, Kate.'

` You here, mamma! Is it possible!'

`Possible, my dear? Yes.'

`Why who--who on earth is that you have with you, mamma?' said Kate, shrinking back as she caught sight of a man smiling and kissing his hand.

`Who do you suppose, my dear?' replied Mrs Nickleby, bending towards Mrs Wititterly, and speaking a little louder for that lady's edification.

`There's Mr Pyke, Mr Pluck, Sir Mulberry Hawk, and Lord Frederick Verisopht.'

`Gracious Heaven!' thought Kate hurriedly. `How comes she in such society?'

Now, Kate thought thus so hurriedly, and the surprise was so great, and moreover brought back so forcibly the recollection of what had passed at Ralph's delectable dinner, that she turned extremely pale and appeared greatly agitated, which symptoms being observed by Mrs Nickleby, were at once set down by that acute lady as being caused and occasioned by violent love. But, although she was in no small degree delighted by this discovery, which reflected so much credit on her own quickness of perception, it did not lessen her motherly anxiety in Kate's behalf; and accordingly, with a vast quantity of trepidation, she quitted her own box to hasten into that of Mrs Wititterly. Mrs Wititterly, keenly alive to the glory of having a lord and a baronet among her visiting acquaintance, lost no time in signing to Mr Wititterly to open the door, and thus it was that in less than thirty seconds Mrs Nickleby's party had made an irruption into Mrs Wititterly's box, which it filled to the very door, there being in fact only room for Messrs Pyke and Pluck to get in their heads and waistcoats.

`My dear Kate,' said Mrs Nickleby, kissing her daughter affectionately.

`How ill you looked a moment ago! You quite frightened me, I declare!'

`It was mere fancy, mamma,--the--the--reflection of the lights perhaps,'

replied Kate, glancing nervously round, and finding it impossible to whisper any caution or explanation.

`Don't you see Sir Mulberry Hawk, my dear?'

Kate bowed slightly, and biting her lip turned her head towards the stage.

But Sir Mulberry Hawk was not to be so easily repulsed, for he advanced with extended hand; and Mrs Nickleby officiously informing Kate of this circumstance, she was obliged to extend her own. Sir Mulberry detained it while he murmured a profusion of compliments, which Kate, remembering what had passed between them, rightly considered as so many aggravations of the insult he had already put upon her. Then followed the recognition of Lord Verisopht, and then the greeting of Mr Pyke, and then that of Mr Pluck, and finally, to complete the young lady's mortification, she was compelled at Mrs Wititterly's request to perform the ceremony of introducing the odious persons, whom she regarded with the utmost indignation and abhorrence.

`Mrs Wititterly is delighted,' said Mr Wititterly, rubbing his hands;`delighted, my lord, I am sure, with this opportunity of contracting an acquaintance which, I trust, my lord, we shall improve. Julia, my dear, you must not allow yourself to be too much excited, you must not. Indeed you must not. Mrs Wititterly is of a most excitable nature, Sir Mulberry.

The snuff of a candle, the wick of a lamp, the bloom on a peach, the down on a butterfly. You might blow her away, my lord; you might blow her away.'

Sir Mulberry seemed to think that it would be a great convenience if the lady could be blown away. He said, however, that the delight was mutual, and Lord Verisopht added that it was mutual, whereupon Messrs Pyke and Pluck were heard to murmur from the distance that it was very mutual indeed.

`I take an interest, my lord,' said Mrs Wititterly, with a faint smile, `such an interest in the drama.'