"
Overtop's meditations, on this particular occasion, pertained to the
style of the costume which would most become him as the lover of Mrs.
Slapman, in an original play to be enacted at her house toward the close
of the week. The question was chiefly of knee breeches. Overtop was
mentally debating whether he ought not, in justice to his thin legs, to
substitute an ampler style of integuments.
Matthew Maltboy had also been invited to this _soiree dramatique_ (as
Mrs. Slapman's large pasteboards expressed it). A fat man was a
necessity of the play. Mrs. Slapman was not cordial to Matthew,
regarding him as an excessively commonplace person, and had invited him
to her social gatherings out of courtesy to Overtop; but her artist eye
saw in him a fitness for the fat man. Matthew was delighted with the
implied compliment to those talents for the stage which every man
supposes himself to possess in some degree, and cheerfully undertook
the part.
The proprieties of costume did not in the least perplex Mr. Maltboy, as
he lay on the sofa digesting his dinner, and puffing out smoke rings by
the dozen.
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