"
"Oh, poor soul! Reflect! How pretty the domestic virtues are, but
how impossible! Besides, how unfashionable!"
Mrs. Buzza reflected.
"I will!" she exclaimed at last. Just then her husband's voice
detonated in the room above. She arose, trembling like a leaf.
"Be firm," said her adviser.
"I will."
"Sit down again. It will do him no harm to wait."
Mrs. Buzza obeyed, still trembling.
It was at this moment that the Honourable Frederic re-entered the
room, and looked around with a slow smile.
"Nellie," he observed, when they were outside the house, "you're a
vastly clever woman, my love."
"How's the Admiral?" was the reply.
"He nibbles, my angel; he bites."
"I heard him barkin'. An' how long will Brady be givin' us?"
"Two months, my treasure."
Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys reflected for a moment, and then made the
following extraordinary reply--
"Be aisy, me dear. In six weeks I'll be ready to elope from yez."
What passed between the Admiral and Mrs. Buzza when they were left
together was never fully known. But it was quickly whispered that in
No. 2, Alma Villas, the worm had turned. Oddly enough, the spread of
conjugal estrangement did not end here. It began to be rumoured that
Lawyer Pellow and his wife had "differences "; that Mr.
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