"Do say it; say anything he likes, Mr.
Sparks." "I must say," said Mrs.Dalrymple, "however sorry I may feel in my own house to condemn any one, that Mr.Sparks is very much in the wrong." Poor Sparks looked like a man in a dream.
"If he will tell Charles,--Mr.O'Malley, I mean," said Matilda, blushing scarlet, "that he meant nothing by what he said--" "But I never spoke, never opened my lips!" cried out the wretched man, at length sufficiently recovered to defend himself.
"Oh, Mr.Sparks!" "Oh, Mr.Sparks!" "Oh, Mr.Sparks!" chorussed the three ladies.
While the old major brought up the rear with an "Oh, Sparks, I must say--" "Then, by all the saints in the calendar, I must be mad," said he; "but if I have said anything to offend you, O'Malley, I am sincerely sorry for it." "That will do, sir," said I, with a look of royal condescension at the _amende_ I considered as somewhat late in coming, and resumed my seat.
This little _intermezzo_, it might be supposed, was rather calculated to interrupt the harmony of our evening.

Not so, however.

I had apparently acquitted myself like a hero, and was evidently in a white heat, in which I could be fashioned into any shape.

Sparks was humbled so far that he would probably feel it a relief to make any proposition; so that by our opposite courses we had both arrived at a point at which all the dexterity and address of the family had been long since aiming without success.
Conversation then resumed its flow, and in a few minutes every trace of our late _fracas_ had disappeared.
By degrees I felt myself more and more disposed to turn my attention towards Matilda, and dropping my voice into a lower tone, opened a flirtation of a most determined kind.

Fanny had, meanwhile, assumed a place beside Sparks, and by the muttered tones that passed between them, I could plainly perceive they were similarly occupied.