Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/222

3, 1860.] of so happy a union; her poor sister who is kicked, thumped, scorned, derided, and generally kept down, is not so firm in her views. The happy ones will keep their toiling sisters on the gridiron, at all events; the unhappy ones sometimes wriggle about a little, and think that a woman’s lot is so hard under existing arrangements that it might be no great sin if the curb-chain was loosed off a link or two.

It was very odd, and quite contrary to my expectation; but when I mentioned to Flora that I had casually met with Lamb, she took it so well that I was emboldened to proceed one step further, and mention what I had seen at Madame Léocadie Lareine’s. She was most curious about the dresses; and when I described to her the robe à-la-divorcée with its three flounces, my Flora almost sprang from her chair with excitement, and informed me, that three flounces had not been worn for at least two years. She was evidently drawing inferences unfavorable to Madame Lareine’s skill as an artiste, but I could not help thinking that the French lady might have her reasons for not sending a mourning wife into court attired in the very newest fashion. Flora also wanted to know all about Mrs. Baxter,—was she pretty?—How was her hair done?—How old was she?—had she good teeth?—did she seem pained at her position?—was she a bold thing? I managed matters with such dexterity that my beloved girl actually pressed me to attend the meeting the next day at the office of, and to be present at the great trial itself.

Flora was full of the Divorce Court all night—not but what she considered it a very shocking thing—but I placed the matter before her in so many ways that curiosity maintained its hold of her sweet imagination, and I was aroused from a most delightful dream at 6.50, the next morning by her own taper fingers, and informed that if I wanted to he in time for that odious place, I must display energy of character. Now I had been dreaming of fat oysters, and by one of those strange vagaries in which the human soul, when half-slumbering, appears to delight, had supposed myself to be gifted with submarine faculties, and to be spending an hour or two down amongst the oyster-beds off the Essex coast. From the very lips of one of these delicate crustaceæ—who indeed had fired up at the bare suggestion—I was receiving the must positive assurances that there was nothing in the stories about the oyster-disease which had been lately palmed on the world. A little scarlet fever there might be among the young ones—nothing more. He was about to treat the charge as libellous, and take the propagators of this scandal into court. Did I think that Mr. Edwin James was the best hand in such cases, or would it be better at once