Punch: Punch (70.1876)

May 20, 1876.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

205

MAY MEETINGS.

0'

F course a number of the
May Meetings have been
very successful, but there
have been also some
failures. For instance :—
When Brown met Robin-
son, and remarked that it
was a lovely day; Robinson
at the time being a sufferer
from bronchitis, and the
wind being N.N.E., Robin-
son's language was. not
what it might have been
had the wind been S.W.

Again the meeting of Mb.
Dunup with his creditors
was scarcely satisfactory,
inasmuch as Mr. Dunup
snapped his fingers at his
creditors, and they in return
threatened criminal pro-
ceedings. Mr. D. is now
on the Continent.

It was not a successful
meeting between Edwin
and Angelina in the lane,
_s>j) when the clock struck nine,
and they quarrelled, and
both caught a dreadful cold which rendered them " perfect sights "
for at least a fortnight.

Success did not attend the meeting of two vehicles in Wych Street,
when neither would give way, and both were summoned by the
Police, and duly fined for obstructing the traffic.

There was not much glory either about a rencontre between
De Tompeyns and Miss Gwendoline de Courcy, when the former,
who had been neglecting the latter, observed playfully, '' And doth
not a meeting like this make amends ? " and when the Lady imme-
diately rejoined, " Not a bit of it; unless you give me the seal-skin
jacket and the diamond ring you promised me so often."

There was also another meeting which was not altogether of an
unchequered character. Two individuals " met, 'twas in a crowd."
One of the individuals missed a valuable gold repeater on getting
out of the crowd.

It is no use multiplying these cases. Life has many phases, and
the most pleasant meeting Mr. Punch has heard of is where two old
friends, having had a disagreement, met one another half way, and
made it up.

GONE AVEONG!

A NEW NOVEL. BY MISS RHODY DENDRON,

Authoress of " Cometh Down like a Shower," "Red in the Nose is She,"
" Good I Buy Sweet Tart I " "Not Slily, But don't Tell"

Chapter XIII.— What Somebody says.

"What can Percy Shortwynd do in such a situation, with this
round, warm, firm, unconscious beauty in his arms ?

She is, it is true, little more than an acquaintance. But then she
is an acquaintance. He cannot drop her suddenly on that account.

But a few days ago, after he had first seen her, he felt that he
could not do without her : now he does not know what to do with
her.

Shall he break open one of the butterfly cases in the Museum, and
leave her there for the night ? Her warm soft hair caresses his
cheeks, and mingles, sympathetically, with his weeping whiskers;
and it is no wonder that, in this intoxicating moment, he loses his
own head, and finds hers on his shoulders. Two heads are better
than one; but where is his own ? He looks down the passage!
The blackness is illumined from the Aquarium Department, where
a stream of light is always kept burning—a sort of floating beacon
in case any of the fish should be taken ill in the night.

Here he lays her down at full length, reclining in an arm-chair ;
heavily on the outline of her knees lie her blue-veined hands, and
ivory-carved wrists. What can he do? He caresses her gently
with a small wire hand-broom, which he fortunately picks up close
at hand ; then he pulls a live? wriggling, twisting, agonising eel
out of its tank, and lets it wind itself playfully about her face,
until, with a deep-drawn sigh, the soul comes back to its own place,
and, pale and clear, her eyes' dark glories shine forth once more
beneath the upturned, curling lashes. Then he withdrew the cold,
refreshing fish from her face, and restored it to itsjtank.

" What was it tickling me r" she asked, in a low, frightened voice.

Only a fish, answers Percy, with a reassuring smile. " You
looked ill. and I thought I could eel you. So I did." Then he
added, softly, very softly, " You 're in the Aquarium."

" You 're a Fellow," she replied.

" You 're not another."

Then she recalls their relative positions: she, a nameless depen-
dant, a lady-help in the house of a fine, old-established, English
gentleman, whose titled son now stands entranced by her side.

" Go away! " she says, faintly.

" Never ! " he replies, impulsively shaking his short brown locks,
more curly than a bull's forehead. The next moment he has strained
her to his heart.

" Bella !" he cries, "I will marry you, even if my father cut
me off with a shilling."

" What could we do ? " she asks, feebly.

" Do! " he cries. " We could keep a bon-bon shop."

"Yes," she answered, lifting up her great green eyes towards
him, and speaking with a mouth like a ripe cleft cherry, " we could
keep a bon-bon shop, and make money by letting out siveets-"

" Sweets of apartments, and taking in a flat or two," he cries,
finishing her sentence for her, and then laying his lips upon the
blossom of her sweet red mouth, he thinks that no bon-bon in all
the imaginary niagasin will be equal to this.

Suddenly a pang of jealous suspicion shoots across him, and he
starts as if with pain.

" Tell me," he asks, "have you ever loved any one before this? "

Now is her opportunity. Is she to speak truth, or to lie ? What
matters it to him, as long as he is happy ?

" Never! " she replies, with unhesitating vehemence.

Has she forgotten that figure of Dusover in the glass case ? No,
but she will not think of it; she rejects it as being no longer a case
in point.

Then she stoops down, bending herself to her square-set, broad-
shouldered, sturdy lover, and whispering in his ear, " I love you to
subtraction! " she places two burning lips on the back of his
head*

Enraptured, overjoyed, amazed at his own ecstatic, blissful happi-
ness, Percy catches her to his heart with both arms, and whistling
a popular melody, galop time, he flies round the Museum with her
in frenzied haste.

Then, panting and palpitating, they dance in the middle of the
room, silent, careering, inexpressibly happy.

The old clock in the town strikes two, as, to relieve their over-
burdened feelings, they commence playing Dumb Crambo. Percy
is to leave the room, and Bella is to tell him what the word rhymes
with. He opens the door to go out into the passage, when in walks,
pale, dignified, statuesque, and classical, Lady Virginia Creeper.

"So! " she says, in a hissing voice. " This is what you call
Dumb Crambo !

Bella sinks on the ground trembling, with a world of horror and
surprise in her great, innocent eyes; while Percy, who at the first
start had jumped backwards into the Octopus Tank, now rises from
thence, calm, dignified, serene, and confronts his cousin, as she
stands, with her pink ears back, and that zebra-like look in her
countenance, the very picture of a resolute, and cruelly-chiselled
statue, in the grey moonlight.

Chapter XIV.— What the Author says.

"Well!" says Percy Shortwynd, turning towards the Lady
Virginia Creeper, his face growing white and fierce. " Do you
not believe me?"

The zebra-like look comes into her face, as she replies, with freez-
ing calm. " I do not believe you, my boy. I find you and Miss
Bella St. John Villars in the Aquarium Department of the
Museum at four o'clock in the morning, and I do not believe that
your sole object in coming here was to play Dumb Crambo. I may
be behind my age—and I wish I were more so by several years—but
I have yet to learn that Dumb Crambo, in an Aquarium, between
two people, is not contrary to all preconceived notions of propriety
and deportment. Therefore you will allow me to deliver my mes-
sage, and then to take you, Mr. Percy Shortwynd, away with
me.

These last words she says haughtily, and with terrible effect.
What is her message ? That, at least, she can let Bella know, and
at once.

" It is a telegram," replied Lady Virginia, elevating her cold,
classic head, and extending upward her long, white, Parian marble
neck.

" A telegram! " exclaims Bella, stung into swift anger with this

* " On the back of his head." The italics are ours (the Editing Com-
mittee's—with one dissentient, our much-respected Maiden Aunt), as we
really could not stand any more of this sort of thing; and so, with the public
good in view, we chose this description of the heroine's action as being entirely
unobjectionable. We omit three pages of " love-making," and are quite
certain that the talented Authoress will not mind, as the matter can easily
come in, anywhere else, in her next new book.—Ed. Com.