“M—m—m—m—music.” So insinuating was Mrs Lammle that she got half a dozen ms into the word before she got it out.
“I haven’t nerve to play even if I could. Ma plays.”
(At exactly the same canter, and with a certain flourishing appearance of doing something, Ma did, in fact, occasionally take a rock upon the instrument.)
“Of course you like dancing?”
“Oh no, I don’t,” said Miss Podsnap.
“No? With your youth and attractions? Truly, my dear, you surprise me!”
“I can’t say,” observed Miss Podsnap, after hesitating considerably, and stealing several timid looks at Mrs Lammle’s carefully arranged face, “how I might have liked it if I had been a — you won’t mention it, will you?”
“My dear! Never!”
“No, I am sure you won’t. I can’t say then how I should have liked it, if I had been a chimney-sweep on May-day.”
“Gracious!” was the exclamation which amazement elicited from Mrs Lammle.
“There! I knew you’d wonder. But you won’t mention it, will you?”
“Upon my word, my love,” said Mrs Lammle, “you make me ten times more desirous, now I talk to you, to know you well than I was when I sat over yonder looking at you. How I wish we could be real friends! Try me as a real friend. Come! Don’t fancy me a frumpy old married woman, my dear; I was married but the other day, you know; I am dressed as a bride now, you see. About the chimney-sweeps?”
“Hush! Ma’ll hear.”
“She can’t hear from where she sits.”
“Don’t you be too sure of that,” said Miss Podsnap, in a lower voice. “Well, what I mean is, that they seem to enjoy it.”
“And that perhaps you would have enjoyed it, if you had been one of them?”
Miss Podsnap nodded significantly.
“Then you don’t enjoy it now?”
“How is it possible?” said Miss Podsnap. “Oh it is such a dreadful thing! If I was wicked enough — and strong enough — to kill anybody, it should be my partner.”
This was such an entirely new view of the Terpsichorean art as socially practised, that Mrs Lammle looked at her young friend in some astonishment. Her young friend sat nervously twiddling her fingers in a pinioned attitude, as if she were trying to hide her elbows. But this latter Utopian object (in short sleeves) always appeared to be the great inoffensive aim of her existence.
“It sounds horrid, don’t it?” said Miss Podsnap, with a penitential face.
Mrs Lammle, not very well knowing what to answer, resolved herself into a look of smiling encouragement.