"
Lady Julia, at whom he had looked while uttering this original
desire, was about to reply when Madame uttered a stentorian click and
interposed.
"In the spring the young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love,"
she remarked, with the fictitious ease of profound ill-breeding.
No one dared to dispute the portentous statement, and she resumed
majestically,--
"The Mouse is delicious in spring."
There was another dead silence, and Madame, turning with patronising and
heavy affability towards Lady Julia, added,--
"Your ladyship doubtless loves the Mouse--_Mus Pulcherrimo_--in spring
as I do?"
The Prophet felt as if he were being pricked by thousands of red-hot
needles, and the perspiration burst out in beads upon his forehead.
"I am not specially fond of mice in spring, or indeed at any season,"
replied Lady Julia, with her slight, but very distinct and bell-like,
cough.
"I said the Mouse, your ladyship," returned Madame, feeding upon this
titled acquaintance with her bulging black eyes, and pushing the kid
boots well out from under her brown skirt. "I observed that the Mouse
was peculiarly delicious in the season of love.
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