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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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386 Now, in the ordinary course of things, and according to all authentic descriptions of high life, as set forth in books, Mrs Wititterly ought to have been in her boudoir; but whether it was that Mr Wititterly was at that moment shaving himself in the boudoir or what not, certain it is that Mrs Wititterly gave audience in the drawing-room, where was everything proper and necessary, including curtains and furniture coverings of a roseate hue, to shed a delicate bloom on Mrs Wititterly’s complexion, and a little dog to snap at strangers’ legs for Mrs Wititterly’s amusement, and the afore-mentioned page, to hand chocolate for Mrs Wititterly’s refreshment. The lady had an air of sweet insipidity, and a face of engaging paleness; there was a faded look about her, and about the furniture, and about the house. She was reclining on a sofa in such a very unstudied attitude, that she might have been taken for an actress all ready for the first scene in a ballet, and only waiting for the drop curtain to go up. ‘Place chairs.’ The page placed them. ‘Leave the room, Alphonse.’ The page left it; but if ever an Alphonse carried plain Bill in his face and figure, that page was the boy. ‘I have ventured to call, ma’am,’ said Kate, after a few seconds of awkward silence, ‘from having seen your advertisement.’ ‘Yes,’ replied Mrs Wititterly, ‘one of my people put it in the paper--Yes.’ ‘I thought, perhaps,’ said Kate, modestly, ‘that if you had not already made a final choice, you would forgive my troubling you with an application.’ |
