Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 046.djvu/394

384 only want to know who she'll walk with next, when you're gone up to the grocer's shop in London."

"Grocer's shop!" exclaimed Plantagenet; "It is the greatest West India house in the City."

"Well, they sell sugar, don't they?—and that's a grocer, isn't it? There's no use trying to gammon us here. You're going to be a grocer: now, the last man Mary was spoony with was something better than that, at any rate."

"What do you mean, Robert?" asked the sister.

"Why, Bob Barrel, the Chadfield doctor. You know very well; but he's married now, and so you're doing the civil to Tadgy."

"Never mind him, Mary, my dear," said Tadgy; "I don't believe a word he says. At the same time I never knew that you were acquainted with Dr Darrell."

"I had a fever three years ago, when I was staying at your uncle Stubbs's, and he was called in."

"Yes, and nearly called out too; for young Stubbs, that's gone into the army, wanted to shoot him for being too attentive. Those doctor fellows are always squeezing hands, and clutching hold of arms; and pretend it's only feeling the pulse. I think Stubbs should have shot him."

"What for?" asked Plantagenet.

"Why, for marrying that other woman. He ought to have married Mary."

"How can you listen to such nonsense, Tadgy?" said Mary; "you know Bob's agreeable way of saying pleasant things. I assure you Dr Darrel was only a very good and kind doctor; and, if you like to believe me rather than Bob, you will not mind any thing more he says."

Plantagenet looked at the honest open countenance of his future bride, and saw that no deceit could possibly lie on those sunny cheeks, and in those clear innocent eyes; so he gave her hand a gentle squeeze, and looked with ineffable disdain on the mischievous countenance of Mister Bob.

"Well," said that gentle squire, "you needn't sit billing and cooing here all day. I'm afraid somebody may go and tell father; and I know he would be very angry if he knew you had been carrying on your rigs before the whole town. You had better come home, Mary; for, if anybody does tell father, and I'm called in as a witness, I am afraid I must tell all I've seen."

"What have you seen, you insolent blockhead?" said Plantagenet, springing up.

"Oh, never mind! If you're really going to marry our Mary, it doesn't much matter. I only hope she wont be disappointed again—that's all."

"I never was disappointed, you idle, false-tongued, intolerable wretch!" exclaimed Mary, the tears of anger and vexation springing into her eyes.

"Weren't you?" replied the benevolent brother; "then that's a pleasure to come; for you may depend upon it, when Tadgy rises to be a grocer on his own account, he'll forget you as easily as Doctor Darrell."

The speaker came more abruptly to a close than was his custom, for he saw something so peculiar in the flashing eyes and swelling chest of Plantagenet, that he thought it better to decamp at once. He accordingly strolled off in the same listlesss manner in which he had made his approach; and the lovers felt as if relieved from some horrible oppression, when they saw the long figure of the overgrown Yahoo, with his coat a mile too large for his thin body, and his trowsers a mile too short for his long legs, thereby revealing nearly the whole extent of his Wellington's, slowly disappear at the turning of the elm walk.

"Thank heaven I have not shoved him into the water!" was the pious exclamation of Plantagenet, when he found that, for this occasion, he was free from the guilt of murder.

"I can't understand what pleasure the boy can have in saying disagreeable things, and inventing such abominable stories," was the contemporaneous observation of his sister.

And hereupon followed a full explanation of all the incidents that the Yahoo, either then or at any former time, had alluded to; and, as usually happens in affairs of that kind, both parties felt that the attempt of Mr Bob to sow dissension, had had the very opposite effect, by giving an opening to a more full and free communication than could have been found under any other circumstances.

On getting up to go home, it might have been remarked by those who are superstitiously inclined, that the first