a thousand years, my love”—

“Love!” exclaimed Mrs. Jericho, and this time she turned full upon the offender. For a minute, she stood withering him from between the bed-curtains. And Jericho, not wholly lost to shame, dragged his night-cap over his brow, and shrinking, rolled himself upon the other side. With his heavy eye upon the parrots and parroquets perched and flying upon the bed-room paper that adorned the wall—for Mrs. Jericho, as she told her bosom friends, would have that paper at any price; the birds, and the palms, and the savannahs, as she said, so reminding her of past happiness with Pennibacker,—Jericho manfully continued:

“Yes, a thousand years, I shouldn’t forget last night.”

“Very likely not,” said Mrs. Jericho. “I’ve no doubt you deserve to remember it. I shouldn’t wonder.”

“You don’t know, my dear Sabilla”—Mrs. Jericho trod the room anew, impatient of such daring familiarity—“you don’t know what I’ve suffered. Such an extraordinary dream! I feel it now. It has almost killed me with bile. But it’s the usual case with me. An uncomfortable dream always does. Killed with bile.”

(The wretched hypocrite! With such baited cunning, he angled in the depths of woman’s tenderness for unmerited sympathy. But we trust the reader will feel a grim pleasure at his disappointment; he took none.)

[Pg 28]

[Pg 28]

“The dream, my love, the dream has quite scorched me up. I’m a man—as I believe you’ll give me credit for, dear Sabilla—a man with a mind above such things; otherwise, I should think something dreadful, very dreadful, was going to happen. Could you give me some soda-water?”

“I am very sure, Mr. Jericho, there is not a single drop of soda-water in the house.”

Hereupon the sufferer ventured to make a suggestion.

“Couldn’t you send for some?”

“Certainly not,” replied Mrs. Jericho, with instant decision. “If I cannot reclaim you to propriety, at least let me have the satisfaction, for the sake of your children, Pennib—Mr. Jericho—for their sake, let me, if possible, hide from an inquisitive world the vices of their father. Let me, at least, have such barren consolation.” Jericho was silent. In consequence thereof, Mrs. Jericho, with gushing fluency, continued—“I have no wish, sir, to busy the idle world with my private wrongs; none whatever.”

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