Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/183

 "Madam, you would not fail. I should be your husband."

Emblem laughed outright at the sublime sternness of his face. But I think had that lad put forth his hand just then in the manner of a king, I must have dropped upon my knees and kissed it as a most duteous subject of his majesty. Despite his youth, his powder, and his petticoats, as he sat there solemnly and said this, he cut a wonderful fine figure.

"But this is talk," says I, determined to correct his youthful arrogance. "A kinless beggar may not aspire to the hand of a princess."

"And does not wish to do," says he, and made me wince. It seemed that when it came to fisticuffs he could hit the harder.

"Yet if you did you could never marry me, you know. A cat may look at a king, but beyond that it never goes."

"That is as may be," he replied; "but man proposes, God disposes, and what doth woman do?"

"Acquiesces, I suppose," says I, and groaned to think so.

"Extremely true," says he, "woman acquiesces. And if Man, in the person of myself, proposed to make a husband for you, your husband I should be unless God disposed it otherwise, which is not likely, for Heaven hath been very much on my side hitherto. Deny, an you can, that if to-morrow morning I so much as put my little finger up and