Well, ma'am, my wife and I are come to pay our respects to
you; we are both glad to find that you have left off keeping
company with Flaming Bosville, and have taken up with my pal; he is
not very handsome, but a better--"
"I take up with your pal, as you call him! you had better mind what
you say," said Isopel Berners, "I take up with nobody."
"I merely mean taking up your quarters with him," said Mr.
Petulengro; "and I was only about to say a better fellow-lodger you
cannot have, or a more instructive, especially if you have a desire
to be inoculated with tongues, as he calls them. I wonder whether
you and he have had any tongue-work already."
"Have you and your wife anything particular to say? if you have
nothing but this kind of conversation I must leave you, as I am
going to make a journey this afternoon, and should be getting
ready."
"You must excuse my husband, madam," said Mrs. Petulengro, "he is
not overburdened with understanding, and has said but one word of
sense since he has been here, which was that we came to pay our
respects to you. We have dressed ourselves in our best Roman way,
in order to do honour to you; perhaps you do not like it; if so, I
am sorry. I have no French clothes, madam; if I had any, madam, I
would have come in them, in order to do you more honour.
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