The Mystery of Edwin Drood | Page 5

(for he is little more) lays a hand on Jasper's shoulder,
Jasper cordially and gaily lays a hand on HIS shoulder, and so
Marseillaise-wise they go in to dinner.
'And, Lord! here's Mrs. Tope!' cries the boy. 'Lovelier than ever!'
'Never you mind me, Master Edwin,' retorts the Verger's wife; 'I can
take care of myself.'
'You can't. You're much too handsome. Give me a kiss because it's
Pussy's birthday.'
'I'd Pussy you, young man, if I was Pussy, as you call her,' Mrs. Tope
blushingly retorts, after being saluted. 'Your uncle's too much wrapt up
in you, that's where it is. He makes so much of you, that it's my opinion
you think you've only to call your Pussys by the dozen, to make 'em
come.'
'You forget, Mrs. Tope,' Mr. Jasper interposes, taking his place at the
table with a genial smile, 'and so do you, Ned, that Uncle and Nephew
are words prohibited here by common consent and express agreement.
For what we are going to receive His holy name be praised!'
'Done like the Dean! Witness, Edwin Drood! Please to carve, Jack, for I
can't.'

This sally ushers in the dinner. Little to the present purpose, or to any
purpose, is said, while it is in course of being disposed of. At length the
cloth is drawn, and a dish of walnuts and a decanter of rich-coloured
sherry are placed upon the table.
'I say! Tell me, Jack,' the young fellow then flows on: 'do you really
and truly feel as if the mention of our relationship divided us at all? I
don't.'
'Uncles as a rule, Ned, are so much older than their nephews,' is the
reply, 'that I have that feeling instinctively.'
'As a rule! Ah, may-be! But what is a difference in age of half- a-dozen
years or so? And some uncles, in large families, are even younger than
their nephews. By George, I wish it was the case with us!'
'Why?'
'Because if it was, I'd take the lead with you, Jack, and be as wise as
Begone, dull Care! that turned a young man gray, and Begone, dull
Care! that turned an old man to clay.--Halloa, Jack! Don't drink.'
'Why not?'
'Asks why not, on Pussy's birthday, and no Happy returns proposed!
Pussy, Jack, and many of 'em! Happy returns, I mean.'
Laying an affectionate and laughing touch on the boy's extended hand,
as if it were at once his giddy head and his light heart, Mr. Jasper
drinks the toast in silence.
'Hip, hip, hip, and nine times nine, and one to finish with, and all that,
understood. Hooray, hooray, hooray!--And now, Jack, let's have a little
talk about Pussy. Two pairs of nut-crackers? Pass me one, and take the
other.' Crack. 'How's Pussy getting on Jack?'
'With her music? Fairly.'
'What a dreadfully conscientious fellow you are, Jack! But I know,
Lord bless you! Inattentive, isn't she?'
'She can learn anything, if she will.'
'IF she will! Egad, that's it. But if she won't?'
Crack!--on Mr. Jasper's part.
'How's she looking, Jack?'
Mr. Jasper's concentrated face again includes the portrait as he returns:
'Very like your sketch indeed.'
'I AM a little proud of it,' says the young fellow, glancing up at the
sketch with complacency, and then shutting one eye, and taking a

corrected prospect of it over a level bridge of nut-crackers in the air:
'Not badly hit off from memory. But I ought to have caught that
expression pretty well, for I have seen it often enough.'
Crack!--on Edwin Drood's part.
Crack!--on Mr. Jasper's part.
'In point of fact,' the former resumes, after some silent dipping among
his fragments of walnut with an air of pique, 'I see it whenever I go to
see Pussy. If I don't find it on her face, I leave it there.--You know I do,
Miss Scornful Pert. Booh!' With a twirl of the nut-crackers at the
portrait.
Crack! crack! crack. Slowly, on Mr. Jasper's part.
Crack. Sharply on the part of Edwin Drood.
Silence on both sides.
'Have you lost your tongue, Jack?'
'Have you found yours, Ned?'
'No, but really;--isn't it, you know, after all--'
Mr. Jasper lifts his dark eyebrows inquiringly.
'Isn't it unsatisfactory to be cut off from choice in such a matter? There,
Jack! I tell you! If I could choose, I would choose Pussy from all the
pretty girls in the world.'
'But you have not got to choose.'
'That's what I complain of. My dead and gone father and Pussy's dead
and gone father must needs marry us together by anticipation. Why
the--Devil, I was going to say, if it had been respectful to their
memory--couldn't they leave us alone?'
'Tut, tut, dear boy,' Mr. Jasper remonstrates, in a tone of gentle
deprecation.
'Tut, tut? Yes,