`One good turn deserves another,' said Mr Snevellicci. `I love them and they love me.' And as if this avowal were not made in sufficient disregard and defiance of all moral obligations, what did Mr Snevellicci do? He winked -- winked openly and undisguisedly; winked with his right eye -- upon Henrietta Lillyvick!
The collector fell back in his chair in the intensity of his astonishment. If anybody had winked at her as Henrietta Petowker, it would have been indecorous in the last degree; but as Mrs Lillyvick! While he thought of it in a cold perspiration, and wondered whether it was possible that he could be dreaming, Mr Snevellicci repeated the wink, and drinking to Mrs Lillyvick in dumb show, actually blew her a kiss! Mr Lillyvick left his chair, walked straight up to the other end of the table, and fell upon him -- literally fell upon him -- instantaneously. Mr Lillyvick was no light weight, and consequently when he fell upon Mr Snevellicci, Mr Snevellicci fell under the table. Mr Lillyvick followed him, and the ladies screamed.
`What is the matter with the men, -- are they mad?' cried Nicholas, diving under the table, dragging up the collector by main force, and thrusting him, all doubled up, into a chair, as if he had been a stuffed figure. `What do you mean to do? what do you want to do? what is the matter with you?'
While Nicholas raised up the collector, Smike had performed the same office for Mr Snevellicci, who now regarded his late adversary in tipsy amazement.
`Look here, sir,' replied Mr Lillyvick, pointing to his astonished wife, `here is purity and elegance combined, whose feelings have been outraged -- violated, sir!'
`Lor, what nonsense he talks!' exclaimed Mrs Lillyvick in answer to the inquiring look of Nicholas. `Nobody has said anything to me.'
`Said, Henrietta!' cried the collector. `Didn't I see him --' Mr Lillyvick couldn't bring himself to utter the word, but he counterfeited the motion of the eye.
`Well!' cried Mrs Lillyvick. `Do you suppose nobody is ever to look at me? A pretty thing to be married indeed, if that was law!'
`You didn't mind it?' cried the collector.
`Mind it!' repeated Mrs Lillyvick contemptuously. `You ought to go down on your knees and beg everybody's pardon, that you ought.'
`Pardon, my dear?' said the dismayed collector.
`Yes, and mine first,' replied Mrs Lillyvick. `Do you suppose I ain't the best judge of what's proper and what's improper?'
`To be sure,' cried all the ladies. `Do you suppose we shouldn't be the first to speak, if there was anything that ought to be taken notice of?'
`Do you suppose they don't know, sir?' said Miss Snevellicci's papa, pulling up his collar, and muttering something about a punching of heads, and being only withheld by considerations of age. With which Miss Snevellicci's papa looked steadily and sternly at Mr Lillyvick for some seconds, and then rising deliberately from his chair, kissed the ladies all round, beginning with Mrs Lillyvick.
The unhappy collector looked piteously at his wife, as if to see whether there was any one trait of Miss Petowker left in Mrs Lillyvick, and finding too surely that there was not, begged pardon of all the company with great humility, and sat down such a crest-fallen, dispirited, disenchanted man, that despite all his selfishness and dotage, he was quite an object of compassion.
Miss Snevellicci's papa being greatly exalted by this triumph, and incontestable proof of his popularity with the fair sex, quickly grew convivial, not to say uproarious; volunteering more than one song of no