Peregrines Progress | Page 3

my uncle Jervas, who met her withering glance with all his wonted impassivity, while my uncle George, square face slightly flushed, glanced half-furtively from one to the other and clicked nervous heels together so that his spurs jingled.
"George!" exclaimed my aunt suddenly. "In heaven's name, cease rattling your spurs as if you were in your native stables."
"Certainly, m'dear Julia!" he mumbled, and stood motionless and abashed.
"'Pon me life, Julia," sighed my uncle Jervas, "I swear the years but lend you new graces; time makes you but the handsomer--"
"Begad, but that's the very naked truth, Julia!" cried uncle George. "You grow handsomer than ever."
"Tush!" exclaimed my aunt, yet her long lashes drooped suddenly.
"Your hair is--" said uncle Jervas.
"Wonderful!" quoth uncle George. "Always was, begad!"
"Tchah!" exclaimed my aunt.
"Your hair is as silky," pursued my uncle Jervas, "as abundant and as black as--"
"As night!" added uncle George.
"A fiddlestick!" exclaimed my aunt.
"A raven's wing!" pursued my uncle Jervas. "Time hath not changed the wonder of it--"
"Phoh!" exclaimed my aunt.
"Devil a white hair to be seen, Julia!" added uncle George.
"While as for myself, Julia," sighed my uncle Jervas, "my fellow discovered no fewer than four white hairs above my right ear this morning, alas! And look at poor George--as infernally grey as a badger."
"I think," said my aunt, leaning back in her chair, "I think we were discussing my nephew Peregrine--"
"Our mutual ward--precisely, Julia."
"Aye," quoth uncle George, "we are legal guardians of the lad and--"
"Fie, George!" cried aunt Julia. "A vulgar word, an unseemly word!"
"Eh? Word, Julia? What word?"
"'Lad'!" exclaimed my aunt, frowning. "A most obnoxious word, applicable only to beings with pitchforks and persons in sleeved waistcoats who chew straws and attend to horses. Lads pertain only to your world! Peregrine never was, will, or could be such a thing!"
"Good God!" exclaimed my uncle George feebly, and groped for his short, crisp-curling whisker with fumbling fingers.
"Peregrine never was, will, or could be such a thing!" repeated my aunt in a tone of finality.
"Then what the dev--"
"George!"
"I should say then--pray, Julia, what the--hum--ha--is he?"
"Being my nephew, he is a young gentleman, of course!"
"Ha!" quoth my uncle George.
"Hum!" sighed my uncle Jervas. "A gentleman is usually a better man for having been a lad! As to our nephew--"
"Pray, Jervas," said aunt Julia, lifting white imperious hand, "suffer me one word, at least; in justice to myself I can sit mute no longer--"
"Mute?" exclaimed uncle George, grasping whisker again. "Mute, were you, Julia; oh, begad, why then--"
"George--silence--I plead!" said my aunt, and folding her white hands demurely on her knee gazed down at them wistfully beneath drooping lashes.
"Proceed, Julia," quoth my uncle Jervas, "your voice is music to my soul--"
"Mine too!" added uncle George, "mine too, dooce take me if 't isn't!"
MY AUNT (her voice soft and plaintively sad). For nineteen happy years I have devoted myself to caring for my nephew Peregrine, body and mind. My every thought has been of him or for him, my love has been his shield against discomforts, bodily ailments and ills of the mind--
MY UNCLE JERVAS. And precisely there, Julia, lies his happy misfortune. You have thought for him so effectively he has had small scope to think for himself; cared for him so sedulously that he shall hardly know how to take care of himself; sheltered him so rigorously that, once removed from the sphere of your strong personality, he would be pitifully lost and helpless. In short, he is suffering of a surfeit of love, determined tenderness and pertinacious care--in a word, Julia, he is over-Juliaized!
MY UNCLE GEORGE (a little diffidently, and jingling his spurs). B'gad, and there ye have it, sweet soul--d'ye see--
MY AUNT (smiting him speechless with flashing eye). I--am--not your sweet soul. And as for poor dear Peregrine--
MY UNCLE JERVAS. The poor youth is become altogether too preternaturally dignified, too confounded sober, solemn and sedate for this mundane sphere; he needs more--
UNCLE GEORGE. Brimstone and the devil!
MY AUNT (freezingly). George Vereker!
UNCLE JERVAS. Wholesome ungentleness.
UNCLE GEORGE (hazarding the suggestion). An occasional black eye--bloody nose, d'ye see, Julia, healthy bruise or so--
MY AUNT. Mr. Vereker!
UNCLE GEORGE (groping for whisker). What I mean to say is, Julia, a--ha--hum! (Subsides.)
UNCLE JERVAS. George is exactly right, Julia. Our nephew is well enough in many ways, I'll admit, but corporeally he is no Vereker; he fills the eye but meanly--
MY AUNT (in tones of icy gloom). Sir Jervas--explain!
UNCLE JERVAS. Well, my dear Julia, scan him, I beg; regard him with an observant eye, the eye not of a doting woman but a dispassionate critic--examine him!
(Here I sank lower in my great chair.)
MY AUNT. If Peregrine is not so--large as your robust self or so burly as--monstrous George, am I to blame?
MY UNCLE JERVAS. The adjective robust as applied to myself is, I think, a trifle misplaced. I suggest the word "elegant"