Page:Cuthbert Bede--Little Mr Bouncer and Tales of College Life.djvu/179

Rh cigar, if smoking will not be any annoyance to you, ma'am?"

"Oh, dear no!" replied Mrs. Flabby; "pray smoke! it will remind me of my poor dear husband. He always smoked, night and day. In my happier hours, I called him my limekiln; but, it was not his fault, poor dear soul! it was his misfortune. He was compelled to smoke, you know, in consequence of that bond with the Great Mogul."

"With the Great Mogul?" echoed Mr. Bouncer, who was busily engaged in lighting a cigar from his fusee-box, as he sat on the grassy slope near to Mrs. Flabby: "dear me! I never heard of that."

"No, perhaps not; it was tried to be hushed up," replied Mrs. Flabby, in the most serious, matter-of-fact way; "but, murder will out. Yes, the Great Mogul was his particular friend. They had formed an early intimacy when searching for the North Pole, and the recollection of that terrible incident with the Great Bear was never effaced from his memory, and cemented a friendship which resulted in an impediment of the speech, from which my poor husband suffered most acutely, more particularly when he put on a clean shirt, with which I always kept him well supplied, and he had never to complain of the want of a button."

"That is a very unusual circumstance," said Mr. Bouncer, as he puffed away at his cigar, while the strains of the dance-music floated merrily in the summer air. "But what did he do about the smoking and the Great Mogul?"

"Ah, that was very sad!" said poor Mrs. Flabby, with a sigh; "I grieve to speak ill of any one; but, I am sorry to say that the Great Mogul was no gentleman, and that I was quite deceived in him."