they were, or anything like it—no, not for weeks to come. You have a great deal to answer for; both of you."
They modestly disclaimed any wilful agency in this disastrous state of things, and regretted it very much.
"Your pious Pa, too!" said Mrs. Todgers. "There's a loss! My dear Miss Pecksniffs, your Pa is a perfect missionary of peace and love."
Entertaining an uncertainty as to the particular kind of love supposed to be comprised in Mr. Pecksniff's mission, the young ladies received this compliment rather coldly.
"If I dared," said Mrs. Todgers, perceiving this, "to violate a confidence which has been reposed in me, and to tell you why I must beg of you to leave the little door between your room and mine open to-night, I think you would be interested. But I musn't do it, for I promised Mr. Jinkins faithfully that I would be as silent as the tomb."
"Dear Mrs. Todgers! what can you mean?"
"Why then, my sweet Miss Pecksniffs," said the lady of the house; "my own loves, if you will allow me the privilege of taking that freedom on the eve of our separation, Mr. Jinkins and the gentlemen have made up a little musical party among themselves, and do intend in the dead of this night to perform a serenade upon the stairs outside the door. I could have wished, I own," said Mrs. Todgers, with her usual foresight, "that it had been fixed to take place an hour or two earlier; because, when gentlemen sit up late, they drink, and when they drink, they 're not so musical, perhaps, as when they don't. But this is the arrangement; and I know you will be gratified, my dear Miss Pecksniffs, by such a mark of their attention."
The young ladies were at first so much excited by the news, that they vowed they couldn't think of going to bed, until the serenade was over. But half an hour of cool waiting so altered their opinion that they not only went to bed, but fell asleep; and were moreover not ecstatically charmed to be awakened sometime afterwards by certain dulcet strains breaking in upon the silent watches of the night.
It was very affecting—very. Nothing more dismal could have been desired by the most fastidious taste. The gentleman of a vocal turn was head mute, or chief mourner; Jinkins took the bass; and the rest took anything they could get. The youngest gentleman blew his melancholy into a flute. He didn't blow much out of it, but that was all the better. If the two Miss Pecksniffs and Mrs. Todgers had perished by spontaneous combustion, and the serenade had been in honour of their ashes, it would have been impossible to surpass the unutterable despair expressed in that one chorus, "Go where glory waits thee!" It was a requiem, a dirge, a moan, a howl, a wail, a lament; an abstract of everything that is sorrowful and hideous in sound. The flute of the youngest gentleman was wild and fitful. It came and went in gusts, like the wind. For a long time together he seemed to have left off, and when it was quite settled by Mrs. Todgers and the young ladies, that, overcome by his feelings, he had retired in tears, he unexpectedly turned up again at the very top of the tune, gasping for breath. He was a tremendous performer. There was no knowing where to have him; and exactly when you thought he
