Page:Once a Week Jul - Dec 1859.pdf/429

418 Accordingly I thought of an advertisement; yet with no practical design of doing business, but, as I persuaded myself, for a joke. So I scratched with a pencil on the back of a letter, the following: —

WANTED A WIFE. — None but principals need apply. The advertiser does not require cash, but only a companion. He is six -and -twenty, and, tired of single, he thinks he can settle down to married, life. As men go, he believes he has a moderate share of temper, and want of time is his only reason for having recourse to the newspapers. He has enough means for himself and a second party, and is willing to treat at once. He is quite aware that a great many attempts to convert his honest intentions into an extravagant joke will be made, but he warns all rash intruders. If he finds a man hardy enough to make sport of his affections, he will thrash him — if a woman, he will forgive her. He has a heart for the sincere, a horsewhip for the impertinent. In either case, all applications will be promptly attended to, if addressed to P. P., to the office of this paper.

I felt proud of my composition, and puffed away my principe with a vague glee and anticipation of something coming out of it. I had no very great idea that anything but fun would result; and I certainly had not the slightest notion of involving myself in a personal collision with any one. Still the presentiment that it was not destined to be all a barren joke, pressed upon me. On Saturday the advertisement appeared, and I heard its style canvassed by all my friends, and it was jokingly suggested by more than one, that I was the domestically destitute individual who put it forth.

On Monday morning I sent a boy to the newspaper office for P. P.’s letters. I expected he might be followed by some curious and inquisitive persons; so I told him on his way back to call at a bachelor neighbour’s of mine for a book. The trick told. The lad was followed by some persons who never lost sight of him until they ran him to my friend’s, and then they went back and announced that he was the advertiser. I thus discharged in full one or two practical jokes which my neighbour had played upon me. The answers were of the usual character — several seeking to elicit my name, and still more suggesting places of meeting, where I was to exhibit myself with a flower in my button-hole and a white handker- chief in my hand. One only looked like business. It was from a lady, who proposed an interview in a neighbouring city, about forty miles north. She said there was something so frank and straightforward in my advertisement, that she was convinced it was real, and she could rely upon my keeping her name secret, if after we met nothing came of the meeting. She would, therefore, see me at the, at , on a certain day, and if mutual approbation did not follow the interview, why there was no harm done.

Most people would have put down this as a trap to give me a journey for nothing. I did not. A presentiment impelled me to accept and keep the engagement.

This was in the old coaching days, when a man had time to make an acquaintance in forty miles, not as now, when you are at your journey’s end before you have looked round your company in a railway carriage. There were but two insides — myself and a pleasant, talkative, honest-faced elderly gentleman. Shy and timid in female society, I was yet esteemed animated and agreeable enough amongst my own sex. We had no trouble, therefore, in making ourselves agreeable to one another; so much bo, that as the coach approached G — —, and the old gentleman learned that I meant to stop there that night, he asked me to waive ceremony and have a cup of tea with him after I had dined at my hotel. My “fair engagement” was not till next day, and, as I liked the old gentleman, I accepted his offer.

After my pint of sherry, I brushed my hair and went in search of my coach companion and my promised cup of tea. I had no difficulty in finding him out, for he was a man of substance and some importance in the place. I was shown into the drawing-room. My old friend received me heartily, and introduced me to his wife and five daughters. “All spinsters, sir,” said he; “young ladies whom an undiscriminating world seems disposed to leave upon my hands.”

“If we don’t sell, papa,” said the eldest, who with her sisters seemed to reflect her father’s fun, “it is not for want of puffing, for all your introductions are advertisements.”

At the mention of this last word, I felt a little discomposed, and almost regretted my engagement for the next day, when that very night, perhaps, my providential opportunity had arrived.

I need not trouble my readers with all our sayings and doings during tea; suffice it to say that I found them a very pleasant, friendly family, and was surprised to find I forgot all my shyness and timidity, encouraged by their good-tempered ease and conversation. They did not inquire whether I was married or single, for where there were five young unmated daughters, the question might seem invidious. I, however, in the freedom of the moment, volunteered the information of my bachelorhood; I thought I had no sooner communicated the fact than the girls passed round a glance of arch intelligence from one to the other. I cannot tell you how odd I felt at the moment. My sensations were between pleasure and confusion, as a suspicion crossed my mind, and helped, I felt, to colour my cheek. Presently, however, the eldest, with an assumed indifference which cost her an effort, asked where I was staying.

“At the hotel,” I answered with Borne embarrassment.

It was with difficulty they restrained a laugh; they bit their lips, and I had no longer a suspicion —

I was certain. So, after having some music, when I rose to depart I mustered courage, as I bid them good bye, to say aside to the eldest:

“Shall P. P. consider this the interview?”

A blush of conscious guilt, I should rather say innocence, told me I had sent my random arrow to the right quarter; so I pressed the matter no further at that moment, but I did her hand.

I remained in at my hotel next day, until an hour after the appointed time, but no one made their appearance. “Then,” thought I, brushing my hair and adjusting my cravat, “since the mountain will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet must go to the mountain;“ so I walked across to my old