'
'Now just listen, Mamma,' said Anne; 'I begged of Mr. Rupert not to
write anything about Fido in the Conglomeration on Saturday evening;
and because I did so, he would write nothing on his own account, but
pretending to read my verses, he brings out a horrible composition
about a certain Mr. Francis Hollis, who, Miss Hazelby had been
telling us, had been the means of her going to an officers' ball, at
Hull, and whom she had danced with--'
'Capital, capital!' cried Rupert; 'I never heard all this; I did not
know how good my poem was, I knew the truth by intuition.'
'But having heard this made it all the worse for me,' said Anne; 'and
Mamma, this dreadful doggerel--'
'Anne, I declare--' cried Rupert.
'And, Mamma, this dreadful doggerel,' proceeded Anne, 'proposed to
send Fido's heart to this Mr. Hollis, and so put him in raptures with
a gift from Miss Hazleby, and fill his mind with visions of a
surrogate, and a wedding tour to Harrogate. Now was it not the most
impertinent ungentlemanlike thing you ever heard of?'
'How can you talk such nonsense, Anne?' said Rupert; 'do you think I
should have written it, if I had not known it would please her?'
'I believe you would not have dared to behave in such a manner to
Lizzie, or to anyone else who knew what was due to her,' said Anne;
'if Miss Hazleby is vain and vulgar, she is still a woman, and ought
to be respected as such.
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