Mr. and Mrs. Sellars did not appear to have "hit it off" together. Could one wonder: Mrs. Sellars with an uncle on the Stock Exchange, and Mr.
Sellars with one on Peckham Rye? I gathered his calling to have been, chiefly, "three shies a penny." Mrs. Sellars was now, however, happily dead; and if no other good thing had come out of the catastrophe, it had determined Miss Sellars to take warning by her mother"s error and avoid connection with the lowly born. She it was who, with my help, would lift the family back again to its proper position in society.
"It used to be a joke against me," explained Miss Sellars, "heven when I was quite a child. I never could tolerate anything low. Why, one day when I was only seven years old, what do you think happened?"
I confessed my inability to guess.
"Well, I"ll tell you," said Miss Sellars; "it"ll just show you. Uncle Joseph--that was father"s uncle, you understand?"
I a.s.sured Miss Sellars that the point was fixed in my mind.
"Well, one day when he came to see us he takes a cocoanut out of his pocket and offers it to me. "Thank you," I says; "I don"t heat cocoanuts that have been shied at by just anybody and missed!" It made him so wild. After that," explained Miss Sellars, "they used to call me at home the Princess of Wales."
I murmured it was a pretty fancy.
"Some people," replied Miss Sellars, with a giggle, "says it fits me; but, of course, that"s only their nonsense."
Not knowing what to reply, I remained silent, which appeared to somewhat disappoint Miss Sellars.
Out of the Clapham Road we turned into a by-street of two-storeyed houses.
"You"ll come in and have a bit of supper?" suggested Miss Sellars.
"Mar"s quite hanxious to see you."
I found sufficient courage to say I was not feeling well, and would much rather return home.
"Oh, but you must just come in for five minutes, dear. It"ll look so funny if you don"t. I told "em we was coming."
"I would really rather not," I urged; "some other evening." I felt a presentiment, I confided to her, that on this particular evening I should not shine to advantage.
"Oh, you mustn"t be so shy," said Miss Sellars. "I don"t like shy fellows--not too shy. That"s silly." And Miss Sellars took my arm with a decided grip, making it clear to me that escape could be obtained only by an unseemly struggle in the street; not being prepared for which, I meekly yielded.
We knocked at the door of one of the small houses, Miss Sellars retaining her hold upon me until it had been opened to us by a lank young man in his shirt-sleeves and closed behind us.
"Don"t gentlemen wear coats of a hevening nowadays?" asked Miss Sellars, tartly, of the lank young man. "New fashion just come in?"
"I don"t know what gentlemen wear in the evening or what they don"t,"
retorted the lank young man, who appeared to be in an aggressive mood.
"If I can find one in this street, I"ll ast him and let you know."
"Mother in the droaring-room?" enquired Miss Sellars, ignoring the retort.
"They"re all of "em in the parlour, if that"s what you mean," returned the lank young man, "the whole blooming shoot. If you stand up against the wall and don"t breathe, there"ll just be room for you."
Sweeping by the lank young man, Miss Sellars opened the parlour door, and towing me in behind her, shut it.
"Well, Mar, here we are," announced Miss Sellars. An enormously stout lady, ornamented with a cap that appeared to have been made out of a bandanna handkerchief, rose to greet us, thus revealing the fact that she had been sitting upon an extremely small horsehair-covered easy-chair, the disproportion between the lady and her support being quite pathetic.
"I am charmed, Mr.--"
"Kelver," supplied Miss Sellars.
"Kelver, to make your ac-quain-tance," recited Mrs. Sellars in the tone of one repeating a lesson.
I bowed, and murmured that the honour was entirely mine.
"Don"t mention it," replied Mrs. Sellars. "Pray be seated."
Mrs. Sellars herself set the example by suddenly giving way and dropping down into her chair, which thus again became invisible. It received her with an agonised groan.
Indeed, the insistence with which this article of furniture throughout the evening called attention to its sufferings was really quite distracting. With every breath that Mrs. Sellars took it moaned wearily.
There were moments when it literally shrieked. I could not have accepted Mrs. Sellars" offer had I wished, there being no chair vacant and no room for another. A young man with watery eyes, sitting just behind me between a fat young lady and a lean one, rose and suggested my taking his place. Miss Sellars introduced me to him as her cousin Joseph something or other, and we shook hands.
The watery-eyed Joseph remarked that it had been a fine day between the showers, and hoped that the morrow would be either wet or dry; upon which the lean young lady, having slapped him, asked admiringly of the fat young lady if he wasn"t a "silly fool;" to which the fat young lady replied, with somewhat unnecessary severity, I thought, that no one could help being what they were born. To this the lean young lady retorted that it was with precisely similar reflection that she herself controlled her own feelings when tempted to resent the fat young lady"s "nasty jealous temper."
The threatened quarrel was nipped in the bud by the discretion of Miss Sellars, who took the opportunity of the fat young lady"s momentary speechlessness to introduce me promptly to both of them. They also, I learned, were cousins. The lean girl said she had "erd on me," and immediately fell into an uncontrollable fit of giggles; of which the watery-eyed Joseph requested me to take no notice, explaining that she always went off like that at exactly three-quarters to the half-hour every evening, Sundays and holidays excepted; that she had taken everything possible for it without effect, and that what he himself advised was that she should have it off.
The fat girl, seizing the chance afforded her, remarked genteelly that she too had "heard hof me," with emphasis upon the "hof." She also remarked it was a long walk from Blackfriars Bridge.
"All depends upon the company, eh? Bet they didn"t find it too long."
This came from a loud-voiced, red-faced man sitting on the sofa beside a somewhat melancholy-looking female dressed in bright green. These twain I discovered to be Uncle and Aunt Gutton. From an observation dropped later in the evening concerning government restrictions on the sale of methylated spirit, and hastily smothered, I gathered that their line was oil and colour.
Mr. Gutton"s forte appeared to be badinage. He it was who, on my explaining my heightened colour as due to the closeness of the evening, congratulated his niece on having secured so warm a partner.
"Will be jolly handy," shouted Uncle Gutton, "for Rosina, seeing she"s always complaining of her cold feet."
Here the lank young man attempted to squeeze himself into the room, but found his entrance barred by the square, squat figure of the watery-eyed young man.
"Don"t push," advised the watery-eyed young man. "Walk over me quietly."
"Well, why don"t yer get out of the way," growled the lank young man, now coated, but still aggressive.
"Where am I to get to?" asked the watery-eyed young man, with some reason. "Say the word and I"ll "ang myself up to the gas bracket."
"In my courting days," roared Uncle Gutton, "the girls used to be able to find seats, even if there wasn"t enough chairs to go all round."
The sentiment was received with varying degrees of approbation. The watery-eyed young man, sitting down, put the lean young lady on his knee, and in spite of her struggles and sounding slaps, heroically retained her there.
"Now, then, Rosie," shouted Uncle Gutton, who appeared to have const.i.tuted himself master of the ceremonies, "don"t stand about, my girl; you"ll get tired."
Left to herself, I am inclined to think my _fiancee_ would have spared me; but Uncle Gutton, having been invited to a love comedy, was not to be cheated of any part of the performance, and the audience clearly being with him, there was nothing for it but compliance. I seated myself, and amid plaudits accommodated the ample and heavy Rosina upon my knee.
"Good-bye," called out to me the watery-eyed young man, as behind the fair Rosina I disappeared from his view. "See you again later on."
"I used to be a plump girl myself before I married," observed Aunt Gutton. "Plump as b.u.t.ter I was at one time."
"It isn"t what one eats," said the maternal Sellars. "I myself don"t eat enough to keep a fly, and my legs--"
"That"ll do, Mar," interrupted the filial Sellars, tartly.