Chapter 24 - Page 2

sources of
intelligence), and the Courier went back again.

Mr and Mrs Sparkler had been dining alone, with their gloom cast
over them, and Mrs Sparkler reclined on a drawing-room sofa. It
was a hot summer Sunday evening. The residence in the centre of
the habitable globe, at all times stuffed and close as if it had an
incurable cold in its head, was that evening particularly stifling.

The bells of the churches had done their worst in the way of
clanging among the unmelodious echoes of the streets, and the
lighted windows of the churches had ceased to be yellow in the grey
dusk, and had died out opaque black. Mrs Sparkler, lying on her
sofa, looking through an open window at the opposite side of a
narrow street over boxes of mignonette and flowers, was tired of
the view. Mrs Sparkler, looking at another window where her
husband stood in the balcony, was tired of that view. Mrs
Sparkler, looking at herself in her mourning, was even tired of
that view: though, naturally, not so tired of that as of the other
two.

'It's like lying in a well,' said Mrs Sparkler, changing her
position fretfully. 'Dear me, Edmund, if you have anything to say,
why don't you say it?'

Mr Sparkler might have replied with ingenuousness, 'My life, I have
nothing to say.' But, as the repartee did not occur to him, he
contented himself with coming in from the balcony and standing at
the side of his wife's couch.

'Good gracious, Edmund!' said Mrs Sparkler more fretfully still,
you are absolutely putting mignonette up your nose! Pray don't!'

Mr Sparkler, in absence of mind--perhaps in a more literal absence
of mind than is usually understood by the phrase--had smelt so hard
at a sprig in his hand as to be on the verge of the offence in
question. He smiled, said, 'I ask your pardon, my dear,' and threw
it out of window.

'You make my head ache by remaining in that position, Edmund,' said
Mrs Sparkler, raising her eyes to him after another minute; 'you
look so aggravatingly large by this light. Do sit down.'

'Certainly, my dear,' said Mr Sparkler, and took a chair on the
same spot.

'If I didn't know that the longest day was past,' said Fanny,
yawning in a dreary manner, 'I should have felt certain this was
the longest day. I never did experience such a day.'

'Is that your fan, my love?' asked Mr Sparkler, picking up one and
presenting it.

'Edmund,' returned his wife, more wearily yet, 'don't ask weak
questions, I entreat you not. Whose can it be but mine?'

'Yes, I thought it was yours,' said Mr Sparkler.

'Then you shouldn't ask,' retorted Fanny. After a little while she
turned on her sofa and exclaimed, 'Dear me, dear me, there never
was