Ram was unaware of the fact, or would at least have the ordinary mother-wit to refrain from blurting it out! "Et tu, Brute!" But I must make the dismal confession that my friends are mostly a very fat-witted sort of fellows.
Que faire?—except to explain that my melancholy bereavement must have entirely slipped off my memory, and that in any case it had no logical connection with the matter in hand.
Then Mrs Mankletow inquired, would I, or would I not, marry her illused child? and stated that all she wished for was a plain answer.
I replied that it was a very natural and moderate desire, and I was prepared to gratify it at once by the plain answer of—Not on any account.
Whereupon Mr Solomons stepped forward and politely handed me a folded paper, and, observing that he thought there was no need to protract the interview, he lifted his hat and went off with the ladies, leaving myself upon a bench endeavouring to get the sense of the official document into my baffled and bewildered nob.
Eventually, I gathered that it was a Royal command from the Queen-Empress, backed by the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, that I was to enter my appearance in an action at the suit of Jemima Mankletow for a claim of damages for having breached my promise to marry!
