Dandy Dick Part 10

THE DEAN.

My dear widowed sister, Georgiana Tidman.

SALOME.

What's she like?

SHEBA.

We don't want her.

THE DEAN.

Good gracious! Georgiana and I reconciled after all these years! She will help us to keep the expenses down.

SALOME.

Keep the expenses down!

THE DEAN.

[_Embracing his daughters._] A second mother to my girls. She will implant the precepts of retrenchment if their father cannot!

SALOME.

But, Papa, who is Aunt what's-her-name?

SHEBA.

Who is she?

THE DEAN.

My dears--a mournful, miserable history! [_With his head bent he walks to a chair, and holds out his hands to the girls, who go to him and kneel at his feet._] When you were infants your Aunt Georgiana married an individual whose existence I felt it my sad duty never to recognize.

SALOME.

A bad man?

THE DEAN.

He died ten years ago, and, therefore, we will say a misguided man. He was a person who bred horses to run in races for amus.e.m.e.nt combined with profit. He was also what is called a Gentleman Jockey, and it was your aunt's wifely boast that if ever he vexed her she could take a stone off his weight in half an hour. In due course his neck was dislocated.

SHEBA.

By Aunt?

THE DEAN.

Hush, child, no! You will be little wiser when I tell you he came a cropper!

SALOME.

How awful it all sounds!

THE DEAN.

Left a widow, you would think it natural that Georgiana Tidman would have flown to her brother, himself a widower. Not at all. Maddened, I hope, by grief, she continued the career of her misguided husband, and for years, to use her own terrible words, she was "the Daisy of the Turf."

SHEBA.

What's that?

THE DEAN.

I don't know, toy-child. But at length retribution came. Ill luck fell upon her--her horses, stock, everything, came to the hammer. That was my hour. "Come to me," I wrote, "my children yearn for you."

SHEBA _and_ SALOME.

[_With wry faces._] Oh!

THE DEAN.

"At the Deanery of St. Marvells, with the cares of a household, and a stable which contains only a thirteen-year-old pony, you may obtain rest and forgetfulness." And she is coming!

SHEBA _and_ SALOME.

When? Oh! when?

THE DEAN.

She merely says, "Soon."

SHEBA _and_ SALOME.

[_Stamping with vexation._] Ugh!

THE DEAN.

Salome, Sheba, you will, I fear, find her a sad broken creature, a weary fragment, a wave-tossed derelict. Let it be your patient endeavor to win back a flickering smile to the wan features of this chastened widow.

_BLORE enters with a telegram._

BLORE.

A telegram, sir!

[_THE DEAN opens telegram._