THE WIDOWER'S WOOING.

BY THOMAS HAYNES BAYLY.

IT was a bright spring morning, when the air was what the poets call genial, that, in high spirits, and half-mourning, I set out from the metropolis, to seek, in the Isle of Wight, the young lady to whom I had been somewhat prematurely engaged in the lifetime of my lamented Becky. That unfortunate impediment to our union was now removed, and though she had been gone many months I clung to my semi-sables, because, in my singular case, I thought that on my again beholding Anna Maria and her mother, my black gloves and the crape round my white hat, would speak volumes of love, hope, and constancy, and serve as signals for rejoicing.

its

As the Southampton coach, on the top of which I was seated, flew rapidly along, I gave myself up to blissful anticipations, and though it did occur to me that upwards of two years and a half had elapsed since I had heard of Mrs. Millington and her daughter, and that such a lapse of time brings many changes, still the small cloud turned to me silver lining," and the anxious flurry of my feelings made me think my conveyance, though it went at the rate of nine miles an hour, a slow coach. The Cowes steam-packet vividly revived scenes that were past, and I sat upon the deck recalling one by one the events of my first union with Becky, my imaginary widowhood, our reunion, and my second bereavement, about which there could be no mistake: I saw her as she sat for her picture-I saw her sea-sick on board the sinking Duck, and then, dreadful retrospection! I saw her in her private box! But from the private box which she now occupied, she could never again come forth to claim me, so I lightly stepped upon terra firma, and looked about me at Cowes, with the air of a single man without incumbrances.

My first walk was to the post-office to ascertain the address of Mrs. Millington; I then returned to the hotel, dressed myself with great care, and, having cast a glance at the long mirror in the coffee-room, I drew on my black gloves, and with a palpitating heart proceeded to the house to which I had been directed. It was a very small habitation, quite in the cottage style, standing in an extremely little bit of garden-one of those slim dwellings which indicate the slender means of the proprietor. I had been aware that Anna Maria was dependent on her mother, and that her mother was not rich, when I had been so nearly united to her two years and a half ago. But on very long voyages, when two people are thrown together as we were, they are apt to forget earth and its dross, while fully engrossed by amorous anticipations. Besides, though I should certainly have liked my wife, just for the look of the thing, to have had a little independence of her own, still I could afford to marry whom I pleased; and though I stood for a moment at the door of the exceedingly small cottage, with the knocker in my hand, before I gave the signal which was to summon the servant, I cannot allow it to be supposed that the idea of withdrawing from the pursuit of Anna Maria, on account of her humble abode, entered my imagination.

After twice repeating my knock, a footwoman opened the door and

apologized for delay, saying that she was "a-washing;" to the truth of which statement her red hands and arms, lathered and sloppy up to the elbows, bore ample testimony.

"Is Mrs. Millington at home?" I falteringly inquired.

"No, Sir-not at home," replied the maid. "Is-Miss-Millington within ?"

"Both gone out, Sir."

"I should be sorry to disturb them if they are engaged, but I am so old and intimate a friend, that if they are at home, and visible to any one, I'm sure they would see me."

"Oh, they're not inwisible no where to-day to no one here,” said the maid, shaking her head.

"Pray take my card," said I; and she looked at her wet finger and thumb with some compunction as she took it.

"And here's half-a-crown for yourself," I added, and she took that without hesitation or compunction, for half-crowns are not the worse for wetting.

"Thank ye kindly, Sir; Missis shall have your card when she do come back from Lunnun.”

"What!" I exclaimed; 66 gone!"

"Went this morning to meet Missis's maiden sister, Miss Chumps, what is just come from the Injies."

"This morning! and now long will they stay?"

"A week, Missis said, or ten days at longest."

"Oh, well, it can't be helped," said I; "I shall remain at Cowes till they return. Are they quite well?"

"Why, tollable. Mrs. Millington has had the flenzy, and was so bad Sunday come se'nnight, that Mr. Morbid the potecary gave her epidamic in her gruel; but she be better and stronger now, and means to insult somebody in Lunnun."

"And your young mistress, how is she?"

"Oh! she'd a touch of flenzy, too."

"Not serious, I hope ?"

"Oh, no! young folks don't so much mind.

Mr. Morbid said her's

was little more than a common guitar; but then he told her a cold an't a thing to play with."

"And is she looking as lovely as ever ?"

"Oh, charming! such a face! and then her figure's perfect scymiYou heard of her luck, I

tar!

suppose

יי?

No, what luck?—unless-you mean-my arrival."

"I thought everybody knew. My Missis's maiden sister, Miss Chumps, brought home the news from the Injies."

"I've heard nothing."

"Only to think! and an old friend, too! and I to have the telling on't! Why Miss Anny Marier's father's only brother what surwived, had died at some queer place in those parts;-and he's left all his fortune to she!"

"To Miss Millington ?"

"Oh, yes!—no end to it !"

"You don't say so! have you their address in London ?"

"Oh, yes. The British Hotel, Cockspur-street."

Very well," said I; "and now, can you tell me where I can find furnished lodgings ?"

"How luckily things do turn out!" replied my interesting friend. "There's Mr. Morbid has just the apartments to suit you; there, up the street, he's Missis's potecary, and you see blue and red bottles in his shop-window."

I thanked her, and proceeded to Mr. Morbid, a pale, thin, meek little man, who having walked me about his house, agreed, as the lodgings suited me, to let me have them with cooking and attendance for three guineas a week. I dined at the hotel, and had my luggage removed to my apartments, where I drank tea, and then wrote a letter to Mrs. Millington, expressive of my regret at not finding her at Cowes, and my anxiety for their return. Not a word did I say about that which was uppermost in my thoughts, Anna Maria's accession of fortune; but with an assurance of my disinterested attachment for her daughter, I brought my epistle to a close, and directed it to Mrs. Millington, British Hotel, Cockspur-street.

The next morning I ordered a dinner, plain, but good, and then went forth to enjoy the beauty of the scenery. At my dinner hour I returned with a very excellent appetite, and ordered up my roast fowl, oyster sauce, and potatoes. Up they flew, or rather I should say that I wonder my fowl did not fly into the apartment, for it had never been trussed, but had been simply suspended by its head before the fire, in a state of unsophistication, with its legs and wings hanging loose; and now it lay sprawling on the dish, more like an expiring frog than a barn-door fowl: the potatoes, though heated, certainly were not boiled; and the oysters, plunged in melted butter, gave evidence that the individual who called herself cook (if there really was such a pretender in the house) had no intention of giving me any of her sauce.

This won't do, thought I, so I walked down to Mr. Morbid's back parlour, and requested to speak to him. He entered the apartment, stroking down his hair on his forehead in a forlorn manner.

I began to explain my culinary distresses, and Mr. Morbid listened with a patient countenance, when the door opened, and in came a lady, taller by a head and shoulders than Mr. Morbid, whom he falteringly introduced to me as his wife. I bowed, and then continued my complaint; and Mr. Morbid, perhaps struck with the hungry look which I involuntarily wore, began an apologetic reply; but Mrs. Morbid stopped

him with a vehement exclamation.

"Don't listen to Mr. M. Mr. M., don't speak. He knows nothing, Sir-I settles it all. I means to dress the gentleman's dinner to-morrow." Now Mrs. Morbid was a strapping dame, in a silk gown, with a muslin cape, a flyaway lace cap with artificial sweet peas, and yellow diaculum shoes.

"You dress my dinner, Madam !" said I; "that is out of the question."

But expostulation was vain; and Mrs. Morbid, in the absence of the real cook, who, I believe, had the flenzy, was to perform the part as an amateur. Alas! day after day, I grumbled over an ill-dressed dinner. On inquiry, I found that the kitchen grate had been unfairly diminished, by the insertion of iron plates on either side. The fire, in fact, looked as if it had been laced into a tight pair of stays, the ribs seemed compressed, and the vital spark almost extinct. I needed no moralist to

remind me of the littleness of the grate. I' soon ascertained that, at the apothecary's lodgings, I had no chance of a dinner unless I could literally make up my mind to live upon rhubarb tart.

But what were all these minor anxieties to one who daily looked for a letter from his soul's idol? Could I expect to relish food?

At length it came, not precisely the reply I had expected, but still nothing actually to damp my ardour. We had parted suddenly, and in circumstances most painful to all parties. Nearly three years had since elapsed; and it was something to find her still unmarried, still disengaged, still willing to meet me at her mother's house. In fact, what more could I expect? I read the letter a second time, kissed it, and sat down to a medicated mutton-pie with a very tolerable appetite.

Mrs. and Miss Millington, accompanied by Miss Chumps, in due course of time arrived from London; and I was summoned to their temporary residence, Pigmy Villa.

Again I stood in the very little garden; again I knocked at the door of the very small house; and again it was opened by the handmaid who had already indulged me with an interview. I was admitted, and shown into the very smallest parlour I ever saw in my life. I sat there in great agitation for some time; and then the door opened, and Miss Anna Maria, my ci-devant betrothed, stood before me. I was very much agitated, and for the first ten minutes I could talk of nothing but the weather and the "flenzy;" but she had more courage than myself, and she soon came to the point.

"It is some time since we met, Mr. Daffodil," said she.

"Nearly three years," I replied, sighing deeply.

"You have experienced strange vicissitudes."

"True," I answered; "wonderful ups-and-downs. But she I once thought down, and who suddenly rose up, is now, as I suppose your Mamma informed you, at rest."

"Poor thing!"

tr

Yes; and so I come to you for consolation."

"When I first knew you, Sir," said Anna Maria, with provoking coolness, "you seemed to require little consolation; you thought proper to pay me marked attention during the voyage, and being very young, and very inexperienced, I complied with my mother's wishes, and accepted you."

"I now am free to claim your plighted hand."

"Since that period," she added, "I have become three years older, I have therefore more experience, and, I hope, more sense; you, Sir, are also three years older, and you look it."

"Ma'am; Miss Millington; Anna Maria-"

"Do not interrupt me. I certainly promised to marry you when you proposed for me, you were not aware of an impediment to our union; therefore, if your attachment was real, the circumstances which separated us must have given you deep pain. As no obstacle now exists, and as you have again sought me, I do not think I should be justified in retracting the consent which I formerly gave; that is, if you persist in your determination to wed a portionless girl."

"When I came to seek you here, sweet idol of my beating heart," I replied, "I might have been the smallest degree in the world startled at the very little house in which I found your very small establishment.” "That is candid: then, adieu."

"Nay, I said not that: and you are endeavouring to conceal from me a circumstance which (though nothing could render you more dear) is still, in a worldly point of view, highly gratifying to any individual about to be-that is, I don't mean to say that-in fact, I'm aware of the accession of fortune."

"Oh, you are? Well, isn't she lucky?"

"Who ?"

"Oh! your mother's maiden sister, who brought the news? Yes, yes, she, and indeed all in any way connected with you, must rejoice in your good fortune."

"Mine!"

"Yes, yours."

"Oh, yes, certainly; anything advantageous to one so near and dear as an aunt, must of course gratify me; not that I have any selfish reason to rejoice, for though aunt Chumps is not young, she will of course marry."

"I beg your pardon," said I; "it seems to me that I do not clearly comprehend this matter; and, now I remember, it was but an ignorant girl that spoke to me on the subject."

"If she told you that my aunt, Miss Chumps, had unexpectedly come into a large fortune, she told you the truth.” "Your aunt ?"

"Yes; was that what you heard?"
"No-yes-that is-I really-I forget.'

"Oh, of course, you were thinking of other things. But do you know I never was so surprised as when I heard you had recollected me after such a lapse of time. You must not forget the disparity in our ages; I am many years younger than yourself, and you may by-and-by think me gay and giddy. Visit us, if you please, but speak no more of love until you have very seriously reconsidered the matter."

I retired to my lodgings, startled, disappointed, disorganized; and as prevention is better than cure, I sent down to Mr. Morbid for an antibilious pill; but notwithstanding my precaution my slumbers that night were feverish and disturbed.

The next day I was introduced to Miss Chumps, and I really thought her a very interesting woman. A long residence in a tropical climate had tinged her with deep yellow, and the lines under her eyes and round her mouth were peculiarly dark. Her form, tall and erect, was perhaps what critical people would have called meagre, but still there was a certain something about her, far from disagreeable. She had been sent out to India to seek a husband when she was very young (which must have been a long time ago), and the search having been fruitless, she now came back again, possibly to establish a similar lookout in her native land.

I don't know how it happened, but I saw very little of Anna Maria or her mother during my daily visits to Pigmy Villa. Miss Chumps always received me, and now and then we strolled together by the seashore. She had left England so early in life, that her notions were all oriental-she certainly must have been a little bit vulgar before she set out; and I am inclined to think that a long residence in India, unless