" The old lady chuckled at her
own wit, and the young one laughed to humor her. "Well, my dear, those
two smoked, and revealed themselves--their real selves; and I listened
and heard every word on the top of those drawers."
Fanny looked at the drawers. They were high.
"La, aunt! how ever did you get up there?"
"By a chair."
"Oh, fancy you perched up there, listening, at your age!"
"You need not keep throwing my age in my teeth. I am not so very old.
Only I don't paint and whiten and wear false hair. There are plenty of
coquettes about, ever so much older than I am. I have a great mind not to
tell you; and then much you will ever know about either of these men!"
"Oh, aunt, don't be cruel! I am dying to hear it."
As aunt was equally dying to tell it, she passed over the skit upon her
age, though she did not forget nor forgive it; and repeated the whole
conversation of Vizard and Severne with rare fidelity; but as I abhor
what the evangelist calls "battology," and Shakespeare "damnable
iteration," I must draw upon the intelligence of the reader (if any), and
he must be pleased to imagine the whole dialogue of those two unguarded
smokers repeated to Fanny, and interrupted, commented on at every salient
point, scrutinized, sifted, dissected, and taken to pieces by two keen
women, sharp by nature, and sharper now by collision of their heads.
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