"More independent?" inquired the editor. "If you mean that, I defy anybody to find more fearless exposures of corruption----"
"No, no!" cried Miss Sticker, in an agony of polite confusion. "I didn't mean that. More independent wasn't the word."
"Better printed?" suggested the engineer.
"It can't be done--if you refer to the cheap press--it can't be done for the money," interposed the editor, irritably.
"O, but that's not it!" continued Miss Sticker, wringing her bony fingers, with horrid black mittens on them. "I didn't mean to say better printed, or better paper. It was one word I meant, not two.--With regard to the Press," pursued Miss Sticker, repeating her own ridiculous words carefully, as an aid to memory, "the only question is, whether it ought to be----Bless my heart, how extraordinary! Well, well, never mind: I'm quite shocked, and ashamed of myself. Pray go on talking, and don't notice me."
It was all very well to say, Go on talking; but the editor's amusing story about subscribers to newspapers, had been, by this time, fatally interrupted. As usual, Miss Sticker had stopped us in full flow. The engineer considerately broke the silence by starting another subject.
"Here are some wedding-cards on your table," he said, to my aunt, "which I am very glad to see there. The bridegroom is an old friend of mine. His wife is really a beauty. You know how he first became acquainted with her? No? It was quite an adventure, I assure you. One evening he was on the Brighton Railway; last down train. A lovely girl in the carriage; our friend Dilberry immensely struck with her. Got her to talk after a long time, with great difficulty. Within half an hour of Brighton, the lovely girl smiles, and says to our friend, 'Shall we be very long now, sir, before we get to Gravesend?' Case of confusion at that dreadful London Bridge Terminus. Dilberry explained that she would be at Brighton in half an hour, upon which the lovely girl instantly and properly burst into tears. 'O, what shall I do! O, what will my friends think!' Second flood of tears.--'Suppose you telegraph?' says Dilberry soothingly.--'O, but I don't know how!' says the lovely girl. Out comes Dilberry's pocket-book. Sly dog! he saw his way now to finding out who her friends were. 'Pray let me write the necessary message for you,' says Dilberry. 'Who shall I direct to at Gravesend?'--'My father and mother are staying there with some friends,' says the lovely girl. 'I came up with a day-ticket, and I saw a crowd of people when I came back to the station, all going one way, and I was hurried and frightened, and nobody told me, and it was late in the evening, and the bell was ringing, and, O Heavens! what will become of me!' Third burst of tears.--'We will telegraph to your father,' says Dilberry. 'Pray don't distress yourself. Only tell me who your father is.'--'Thank you a thousand times,' says the lovely girl, 'my father is----'"