'What a jolly old Jack it is!' cries the young fellow, with a clap
of his hands. 'Look here, Jack; tell me; whose birthday is it?'
'Not yours, I know,' Mr. Jasper answers, pausing to consider.
'Not mine, you know? No; not mine, _I_ know! Pussy's!'
Fixed as the look the young fellow meets, is, there is yet in it
some strange power of suddenly including the sketch over the
chimneypiece.
'Pussy's, Jack! We must drink Many happy returns to her. Come,
uncle; take your dutiful and sharp-set nephew in to dinner.'
As the boy (for he is little more) lays a hand on Jasper's
shoulder, Jasper cordially and gaily lays a hand on HIS shoulder,
and so Marseillaise-wise they go in to dinner.
'And, Lord! here's Mrs. Tope!' cries the boy. 'Lovelier than
ever!'
'Never you mind me, Master Edwin,' retorts the Verger's wife; 'I
can take care of myself.'
'You can't. You're much too handsome. Give me a kiss because it's
Pussy's birthday.'
'I'd Pussy you, young man, if I was Pussy, as you call her,' Mrs.
Tope blushingly retorts, after being saluted. 'Your uncle's too
much wrapt up in you, that's where it is. He makes so much of you,
that it's my opinion you think you've only to call your Pussys by
the dozen, to make 'em come.'
'You forget, Mrs. Tope,' Mr. Jasper interposes, taking his place at
the table with a genial smile, 'and so do you, Ned, that Uncle and
Nephew are words prohibited here by common consent and express
agreement.
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