Charles Dickens: Our Mutual Friend

BOOK THE FOURTH: A TURNING Chapter 4: A Runaway Match (continued)

'No, my dear. How can we tell what coming people are aboard the ships that may be sailing to us now from the unknown seas!'

Bella remaining invisible and silent, her father remained at his dessert and wine, until he remembered it was time for him to get home to Holloway. 'Though I positively cannot tear myself away,' he cherubically added, '--it would be a sin--without drinking to many, many happy returns of this most happy day.'

'Here! ten thousand times!' cried John. 'I fill my glass and my precious wife's.'

'Gentlemen,' said the cherub, inaudibly addressing, in his Anglo- Saxon tendency to throw his feelings into the form of a speech, the boys down below, who were bidding against each other to put their heads in the mud for sixpence: 'Gentlemen--and Bella and John-- you will readily suppose that it is not my intention to trouble you with many observations on the present occasion. You will also at once infer the nature and even the terms of the toast I am about to propose on the present occasion. Gentlemen--and Bella and John-- the present occasion is an occasion fraught with feelings that I cannot trust myself to express. But gentlemen--and Bella and John--for the part I have had in it, for the confidence you have placed in me, and for the affectionate good-nature and kindness with which you have determined not to find me in the way, when I am well aware that I cannot be otherwise than in it more or less, I do most heartily thank you. Gentlemen--and Bella and John--my love to you, and may we meet, as on the present occasion, on many future occasions; that is to say, gentlemen--and Bella and John--on many happy returns of the present happy occasion.'

Having thus concluded his address, the amiable cherub embraced his daughter, and took his flight to the steamboat which was to convey him to London, and was then lying at the floating pier, doing its best to bump the same to bits. But, the happy couple were not going to part with him in that way, and before he had been on board two minutes, there they were, looking down at him from the wharf above.