Page:Cuthbert Bede--Verdant Green married and done for.djvu/83

Rh Mr. Verdant Green and Miss Patty Honeywood have been taking a farewell after-dinner stroll in the garden, and have now wandered into the deserted breakfast-room, under the pretence of finding a water-colour drawing of Honeywood Hall, that the young lady had made for our hero.

"Now, you must promise me," she said to him, "that you will take it to Oxford." "Certainly, if I go there again. But"—

"But, sir! but I thought you had promised to give up to me on that point. You naughty boy! if you already break your promises in this way, who knows but what you will forget your promise to remember me when you have gone away from here?"

Mr. Verdant Green here did what is usual in such cases. He kissed the young lady, and said, "You silly little woman! as though I could forget you!" et cetera, et cetera.

"Ah! I don't know," said Miss Patty.

Mr. Verdant Green repeated the kiss and the et ceteras.

"Very well, then, I'll believe you," at length said Miss Patty. "But I won't love you one bit unless you'll faithfully promise that you will go back to Oxford. Whatever would be the use of your giving up your studies?" "A great deal of use; we could be married at once."

"Oh no, we couldn't. Papa is quite firm on this point. You know that he thinks us much too young to be married."

"But," pleaded our hero, "if we are old enough to fall in love, surely we must be old enough to be married."

"Oxford logic again, I suppose," laughed Miss Patty, "but it won't persuade papa, nevertheless. I am not quite nineteen, you know, and papa has always said that I should never be married until I was one-and-twenty. By that time you will have done with college and taken your degree, and I should so like to know that you have passed all your examinations, and are a Bachelor of Arts."

"But," said Verdant, "I don't think I shall be able to pass. Examinations are very nervous affairs, and suppose I should be plucked. You wouldn't like to marry a man who had disgraced himself."

"Do you see that picture?" asked Miss Patty; and she directed Verdant's attention to a small but exquisite oil-painting by Maclise. It was in illustration of one of Moore's melodies, "Come, rest in this bosom, my own stricken deer!" The lover had fallen upon one knee at his mistress's feet, and was locked in her embrace. With a look of fondest love she had pillowed