The girls, after vain attempts to engage him in conversation, talked about fashions and the last drawing-room until he was perfectly sick of their chatter.He contrasted their behaviour with little Emmy's--their shrill voices with her tender ringing tones; their attitudes and their elbows and their starch, with her humble soft movements and modest graces.Poor Swartz was seated in a place where Emmy had been accustomed to sit.
Her bejewelled hands lay sprawling in her amber satin lap.Her tags and ear-rings twinkled, and her big eyes rolled about.She was doing nothing with perfect contentment, and thinking herself charming.Anything so becoming as the satin the sisters had never seen.
"Dammy," George said to a confidential friend, "she looked like a China doll, which has nothing to do all day but to grin and wag its head.By Jove, Will, it was all II could do to prevent myself from throwing the sofa-cushion at her." He restrained that exhibition of sentiment, however.
The sisters began to play the Battle of Prague."Stop that d-- thing," George howled out in a fury from the sofa."It makes me mad.You play us something, Miss Swartz, do.Sing something, anything but the Battle of Prague.""Shall I sing 'Blue Eyed Mary' or the air from the Cabinet?" Miss Swartz asked.
"That sweet thing from the Cabinet," the sisters said.
"We've had that," replied the misanthrope on the sofa"I can sing 'Fluvy du Tajy,' " Swartz said, in a meek voice, "if I had the words." It was the last of the worthy young woman's collection.
"O, 'Fleuve du Tage,' " Miss Maria cried; "we have the song," and went off to fetch the book in which it was.
Now it happened that this song, then in the height of the fashion, had been given to the young ladies by a young friend of theirs, whose name was on the title, and Miss Swartz, having concluded the ditty with George's applause (for he remembered that it was a favourite of Amelia's), was hoping for an encore perhaps, and fiddling with the leaves of the music, when her eye fell upon the title, and she saw "Amelia Sedley" written in the comer.
"Lor!" cried Miss Swartz, spinning swiftly round on the music-stool, "is it my Amelia? Amelia that was at Miss P.'s at Hammersmith? I know it is.It's her.and--Tell me about her--where is she?"
"Don't mention her," Miss Maria Osborne said hastily."Her family has disgraced itself.Her father cheated Papa, and as for her, she is never to be mentioned HERE." This was Miss Maria's return for George's rudeness about the Battle of Prague.
"Are you a friend of Amelia's?" George said, bouncing up."God bless you for it, Miss Swartz.Don't believe what,the girls say.SHE'S not to blame at any rate.
She's the best--"
"You know you're not to speak about her, George,"cried Jane."Papa forbids it."
"Who's to prevent me?" George cried out."I will speak of her.I say she's the best, the kindest, the gentlest, the sweetest girl in England; and that, bankrupt or no, my sisters are not fit to hold candles to her.If you like her, go and see her, Miss Swartz; she wants friends now; and I say, God bless everybody who befriends her.Anybody who speaks kindly of her is my friend; anybody who speaks against her is my enemy.Thank you, Miss Swartz";and he went up and wrung her hand.
"George! George!" one of the sisters cried imploringly.
"I say," George said fiercely, "I thank everybody who loves Amelia Sed--" He stopped.Old Osborne was in the room with a face livid with rage, and eyes like hot coals.
Though George had stopped in his sentence, yet, his blood being up, he was not to be cowed by all the generations of Osborne; rallying instantly, he replied to the bullying look of his father, with another so indicative of resolution and defiance that the elder man quailed in his turn, and looked away.He felt that the tussle was coming."Mrs.Haggistoun, let me take you down to dinner,"he said."Give your arm to Miss Swartz, George,"and they marched.
"Miss Swartz, I love Amelia, and we've been engaged almost all our lives," Osborne said to his partner; and during all the dinner, George rattled on with a volubility which surprised himself, and made his father doubly nervous for the fight which was to take place as soon as the ladies were gone.