"
The old man pointed toward the door with a trembling finger, and a hat
in the other hand, and in an attitude slightly theatrical; so were his
words, when he spoke, somewhat artificial, and chosen from the
vocabulary which he had heard all his life from the painted lips of
the orators before the stage-lamps. But he was not acting or
masquerading, as Pen knew very well, though he was disposed to
pooh-pooh the old fellow's melodramatic airs. "Come along, sir," he
said, "as you are so very pressing. Mrs. Bolton, I wish you a good
day. Good-by, Miss Fanny; I shall always think of our night at
Vauxhall with pleasure; and be sure I will remember the
theatre-tickets." And he took her hand, pressed it, was pressed by it,
and was gone.
"What a nice young man, to be sure!" cried Mrs. Bolton.
"D'you think so, ma?" said Fanny.
"I was a-thinkin who he was like. When I was at the Wells with Mrs.
Serle," Mrs. Bolton continued, looking through the window curtain
after Pen, as he went up the court with Bows; "there was a young
gentleman from the city, that used to come in a tilbry, in a white at,
the very image of him, ony his whiskers was black, and Mr.
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