‘You must dance with Miss Chegs,’ said Miss Sophy to Dick Swiviller, after she had herself danced twice with Mr Cheggs and made great show of encouraging his advances. ‘She’s a nice girl—and her brother’s quite delightful.’

‘Quite delightful, is he?’ muttered Dick. ‘Quite delighted too, I should say, from the manner in which he’s looking this way.’

Here Miss Jane (previously instructed for the purpose) interposed her many curls and whispered her sister to observe how jealous Mr Cheggs was.

‘Jealous! Like his impudence!’ said Richard Swiviller.

‘His impudence, Mr Swiviller!’ said Miss Jane, tossing her head. ‘Take care he don’t hear you, Sir, or you may be sorry for it.’

‘Oh, pray, Jane —’ said Miss Sophy.

‘Nonsense!’ replied her sister. ‘Why shouldn’t Mr Cheggs be jealous if he likes? I like that, certainly. Mr Cheggs has as good a right to be jealous as anybody else has, and perhaps he may have a better right soon if he hasn’t already. You know best about that, Sophy!’

Though this was a concerted plot between Miss Sophy and her sister, originating in humane intentions and having for its object the inducing Mr Swiviller to declare himself in time, it failed in its effect; for Miss Jane being one of those young ladies who are premeturely shrill and shrewish, gave such undue importance to her part that Mr Swiveller retired in dudgeon, resigning his mistress to Mr Cheggs and conveying a defiance into his looks which that gentleman indignantly returned.

‘Did you speak to me, Sir?’ said Mr Cheggs, following him into a corner. ‘Have the kindness to smile, Sir, in order that we may not be suspected. Did you speak to me, Sir?’

Mr Swiveller looked with a supercilious smile at Mr Cheggs’s toes, then raised his eyes from them to his ankle, from that to his shin, from that to his knee, and so on very gradually, keeping up his right leg, until he reached his waistcoat, when he raised his eyes from button to button until he reached his chin, and travelling straight up the middle of his nose came at last to his eyes, when he said abruptly,

‘No, Sir, I didn’t.’

‘Hem!’ said Mr Cheggs, glancing over his shoulder, ‘have the goodness to smile again, Sir. Perhaps you wished to speak to me, Sir.’

‘No, Sir, I didn’t do that, either.’

‘Perhaps you may have nothing to say to me now, Sir,’ said Mr Cheggs fiercely.

At these words Richard Swiveller withdrew his eyes from Mr Cheggs’s face, and travelling down the middle of his nose and down his waistcoat and down his right leg, reached his toes again, and carefully surveyed them; this done, he crossed over, and coming up the other leg and thence approaching by the waistcoat as before, said when he had got to his eyes, ‘No, Sir, I haven’t.’

‘Oh indeed, Sir!’ said Mr Cheggs. ‘I’m glad to hear it. You know where I’m to be found, I suppose, Sir, in case you should have anything to say to me?’

‘I can easily inquire, Sir, when I want to know.’ ‘There’s nothing more we need say, I believe, Sir?’