It was scarcely breakfast-time yet, for Mrs. Crisparkle--mother,
not wife of the Reverend Septimus--was only just down, and waiting
for the urn. Indeed, the Reverend Septimus left off at this very
moment to take the pretty old lady's entering face between his
boxing-gloves and kiss it. Having done so with tenderness, the
Reverend Septimus turned to again, countering with his left, and
putting in his right, in a tremendous manner.
'I say, every morning of my life, that you'll do it at last, Sept,'
remarked the old lady, looking on; 'and so you will.'
'Do what, Ma dear?'
'Break the pier-glass, or burst a blood-vessel.'
'Neither, please God, Ma dear. Here's wind, Ma. Look at this!'
In a concluding round of great severity, the Reverend Septimus
administered and escaped all sorts of punishment, and wound up by
getting the old lady's cap into Chancery--such is the technical
term used in scientific circles by the learned in the Noble Art--
with a lightness of touch that hardly stirred the lightest lavender
or cherry riband on it. Magnanimously releasing the defeated, just
in time to get his gloves into a drawer and feign to be looking out
of window in a contemplative state of mind when a servant entered,
the Reverend Septimus then gave place to the urn and other
preparations for breakfast. These completed, and the two alone
again, it was pleasant to see (or would have been, if there had
been any one to see it, which there never was), the old lady
standing to say the Lord's Prayer aloud, and her son, Minor Canon
nevertheless, standing with bent head to hear it, he being within
five years of forty: much as he had stood to hear the same words
from the same lips when he was within five months of four.
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