"Little Geraldine's self for a candidate, eh?" asked Tom Gower.
"Very possibly," said Belle, with a self-complacent smile. "She's a fast little thing, don't check at much, and she's deucedly in love with me, poor little dear—almost as much trouble to me as Julia Sedley was last season. That girl all but proposed to me; she did, indeed. Never was nearer coming to grief in my life. What will you bet me that, if I advertise for a wife, I don't hoax lots of women?"
"I'll bet you ten pounds," said I, "that you don't hoax one!"
"Done!" said Belle, stretching out his hand for a dainty memorandum-book, gift of the identical Julia Sedley aforesaid, and entering the bet in it—"done! If I'm not asked to walk in the Close at noon and look out for a pink bonnet and a black lace cloak, and to loiter up the market-place till I come across a black hat and blue muslin dress; if I'm not requested to call at No. 20, and to grant an interview at No. 84; if I'm not written to by Agatha A. with hazel, and Belinda B. with black, eyes—all coming after me like flies after a sugar-cask, why you shall have your ten guineas, my boy, and my colt into the bargain. Come, write out the advertisement, Tom—I can't, it's too much trouble; draw it mild, that's all, or the letters we shall get will necessitate an additional Norwich postman. By George, what fun it will be to do the girls! Cut along, Tom, can't you?"
"All right," said Gower, pushing away his coffee-cup, and drawing the ink to him. "Head it 'Marriage,' of course?"
"Of course. That word's as attractive to a woman as the belt to a prize-fighter, or a pipe of port to a college fellow."
"'Marriage.—A Bachelor——'"
"Tell 'em a military man; all girls have the scarlet fever."
"Very well—'an Officer in the Queen's, of considerable personal attractions——'"
"My dear fellow, pray don't!" expostulated Belle, in extreme alarm; "we shall have such swarms of 'em!"
"No, no! we must say that," persisted Gower—"'personal attractions, aged eight-and-twenty——'"
"Can't you put it, 'in the flower of his age,' or his 'sixth lustre'? It's so much more poetic."
"'—the flower of his age,' then (that'll leave 'em a wide range from twenty to fifty, according to their taste), 'is desirous of meeting a young lady of beauty, talent, and good family,'—eh?"
"Yes. All women think themselves beauties, if they're as ugly as sin. Milliners and confectioner girls talk Anglo-French, and rattle a tin-kettle piano after a fashion, and anybody buys a 'family' for half-a-crown at the Heralds' Office—so fire away."
"'—who, feeling as he does the want of a kindred heart and sympathetic soul, will accord him the favor of a letter or an interview, as a preliminary to the greatest step in life.'"
"A step—like one on thin ice—very sure to bring a man to grief," interpolated Belle. "Say something about property; those soul-and-spirit young ladies generally keep a look-out for tin, and only feel an elective affinity for a lot of debentures and consols."
"'The advertiser being a man of some present and still more prospective wealth, requires no fortune, the sole objects of his search being love and domestic felicity.' Domestic felicity—how horrible! Don't it sound exactly like the end of a lady's novel, where the unlucky hero is always brought to an untimely end in a 'sweet cottage on the banks of the lovely Severn.'"
"'Domestic felicity'—bah! What are you writing about?" yawned Belle. "I'd as soon take to teetotalism: however, it'll tell in the advertisement. Bravo, Tom, that will do. Address it to 'L. C., care of Mrs. Greene, confectioner, St. Giles Street, Norwich.' Miss Patty'll take the letters in for me, though not if she knew their errand. Tip seven-and-sixpence with it, and send it to the Daily Pryer."
We did send it to the Daily, and in that broadsheet we all of us read it two mornings after.
MARRIAGE.—A Bachelor, an Officer of the Queen's, of considerable personal attractions, and in the flower of his age, is desirous of meeting a young lady of beauty, accomplishments, and good family, who, feeling as he does the want of a kindred heart and sympathetic soul, will accord him the favor either of a letter or an interview, as a preliminary to the greatest step in life. The advertiser being a man of some present and still more prospective wealth, requires no fortune, the sole objects of his search being love and domestic felicity. Address, L. C., care of Mrs. Greene, confectioner, St. Giles Street, Norwich.
"Whose advertisement do you imagine that is?" said Fairlie, showing the Daily to Geraldine, as he sat with her and her sisters under some lilac and larch trees in one of the meadows of Fern Chase, which had had the civility, Geraldine said, to yield a second crop of hay expressly for her to have the pleasure of making it. She leaned down towards him as he lay on the grass, and read the advertisement, looking uncommonly pretty in her dainty muslin dress, with its fluttering mauve ribbons, and a wreath she had just twisted up, of bluebells and pinks and white heaths which Fairlie had gathered as he lay, put on her bright hair. We called her a little flirt, but I think she was an unintentional one; at least, her agaceries were, all as unconscious as they were—her worst enemies (i.e. plain young ladies) had to allow—unaffected.
"How exquisitely sentimental! Is it yours?" she asked, with demure mischief.
"Mine!" echoed Fairlie, with supreme scorn.
"It's some one's here, because the address is at Mrs. Greene's. Come, tell me at once, monsieur."
"The only fool in the Artillery," said Fairlie, curtly: "Belle Courtenay."
"Captain Courtenay!" echoed Geraldine, with a little flush on her cheeks, caused, perhaps, by the quick glance the Colonel shot at her as he spoke.
"Captain Courtenay!" said Katherine Vane. "Why, what can he want with a wife? I thought he had l'embarras de choix offered him in that line; at least, so he makes out himself."
"I dare say," said Fairlie, dryly, "it's for a bet he's made, to see how many women he can hoax, I believe."
"How can you tell it is a hoax?" said Geraldine, throwing cowslips at her greyhound. "It may be some medium of intercourse with some one he really cares for, and who may understand his meaning."
"Perhaps you are in his confidence, Geraldine, or perhaps you are thinking of answering it yourself?"
"Perhaps," said the young lady, waywardly, making the cowslips into a ball, "there might be worse investments. Your bête noire is strikingly handsome; he is the perfection of style; he is going to be Equerry to the Prince; his mother is just married again to Lord Chevenix; he did not name half his attractions in that line in the Daily."
With which Geraldine rushed across the meadow after the greyhound and the cowslip ball, and Fairlie lay quiet plucking up the heaths by the roots. He lay there still, when the cowslip ball struck him a soft fragrant blow against his lips, and knocked the Cuba from between his teeth.
"Why don't you speak?" asked Geraldine, plaintively. "You are not half so pleasant to play with as you were before you went to India and I was seven or eight, and you had La Grace, and battledoor and shuttlecock, and cricket, and all sorts of games with me in the old garden at Charlton."
He might have told her she was much less dangerous then than now; he was not disposed to flatter her, however. So he answered her quietly,
"I preferred you as you were then."
"Indeed!" said Geraldine, with a hot color in her cheeks "I do not think there are many who would indorse your complimentary opinion."
"Possibly," said Fairlie, coldly.
She