Page:The Firm of Gridlestone (1890).djvu/241

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"Take care! take care!" said the lady, with a warning finger uplifted. "You heard of the breaking of the Agra Bank?"

"What of that?"

"Every penny that I had in the world was in it."

This was facer number two for the campaigner. He recovered himself more quickly from this one, however, and inflated his chest with even more than his usual pomposity.

"Lavinia," said he, "you have been straight with me, and, bedad, I'll be so with you! When I first thought of you I was down in the world, and, much as I admired you, I own that your money was an inducement as well as yoursilf. I was so placed that it was impossible for me to think of any woman who had not enough to keep up her own end of the game. Since that time I've done bether. How I got it is neither here nor there, but I have a little nist-egg in the bank and see me way to increasing it. You tell me your money's gone, and I tell you I've enough for two; so say the word, acushla, and it's done."

"What! without the money?"

"Damn the money!" exclaimed Major Tobias Clutterbuck, and put his arm for the second time around his companion. This time it remained there. What happened after that is neither my business nor the reader's. Couples who have left their youth behind them have their own little romance quite as much as their juniors, and it is occasionally the more heartfelt of the two.

"What a naughty boy to swear!" exclaimed the widow at last. "Now I must give you a lecture since I have the chance."

"Bless her mischievous eyes!" cried the major, with delight in every feature of his face. "You shall give me as many lectures as you plase."

"You must be good, then, Toby, if you are to be my husband. You must not play billiards for money any more."

"No billiards! Why, pool is worth three or four pound a wake to me."