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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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246 wery good thing--but when that joke is made at the expense of Mrs Kenwigs’s feelings, I set my face against it. A man in public life expects to be sneered at--it is the fault of his elewated sitiwation, and not of himself. Mrs Kenwigs’s relation is a public man, and that he knows, George, and that he can bear; but putting Mrs Kenwigs out of the question (if I could put Mrs Kenwigs out of the question on such an occasion as this), I have the honour to be connected with the collector by marriage; and I cannot allow these remarks in my--’ Mr Kenwigs was going to say ‘house,’ but he rounded the sentence with ‘apartments’. At the conclusion of these observations, which drew forth evidences of acute feeling from Mrs Kenwigs, and had the intended effect of impressing the company with a deep sense of the collector’s dignity, a ring was heard at the bell. ‘That’s him,’ whispered Mr Kenwigs, greatly excited. ‘Morleena, my dear, run down and let your uncle in, and kiss him directly you get the door open. Hem! Let’s be talking.’ Adopting Mr Kenwigs’s suggestion, the company spoke very loudly, to look easy and unembarrassed; and almost as soon as they had begun to do so, a short old gentleman in drabs and gaiters, with a face that might have been carved out of lignum vitae, for anything that appeared to the contrary, was led playfully in by Miss Morleena Kenwigs, regarding whose uncommon Christian name it may be here remarked that it had been invented and composed by Mrs Kenwigs previous to her first lying-in, for the special distinction of her eldest child, in case it should prove a daughter. ‘Oh, uncle, I am so glad to see you,’ said Mrs Kenwigs, kissing the collector affectionately on both cheeks. ‘So glad!’ |
