Page:Stubbs's Calendar or The Fatal Boots.djvu/47

Rh would come to Magdalen, for all her £12,000. I used to be attentive to her, though (as it's always useful to be), and Mary would sometimes laugh and sometimes cry at my flirting with Magdalen. This I thought proper very quickly to check. "Mary," said I, "you know that my love for you is disinterested,—for I am faithful to you, though Miss Crutty is richer than you. Don’t fly into a rage, because I pay her attentions, when you know that my heart and my promise are engaged to you."

The fact is, to tell a little bit of a secret, there is nothing like the having two strings to your bow. "Who knows," thought I, "Mary may die; and then where are my £10,000?" So I used to be very kind indeed to Miss Crutty; and well it was that I was so; for when I was twenty, and Mary eighteen, I'm blest if news did not arrive that Captain Waters, who was coming home to England with all his money in rupees, had been taken—ship, rupees, self and all—by a French privateer! and Mary, instead of £10,000, had 4