"Once and for ever." Did
ever woman use such words before? And I - believed them!'
'Did you speak to the mother?' I asked in a fit of
desperation.
'There was no time for that. Mrs. - was in the carriage, and
I didn't pop [the odious word!] till I was helping her on
with her cloak. The cloak, you see, made it less awkward.
My offer was a sort of OBITER DICTUM - a by-the-way, as it
were.'
'To the carriage, yes. But wasn't she taken by surprise?'
'Not a bit of it. Bless you! they always know. She
pretended not to understand, but that's a way they have.'
'And when you explained?'
'There wasn't time for more. She laughed, and sprang into
the carriage.'
'And that was all?'
'All! would you have had her spring into my arms?'
'God forbid! You will have to face the mother to-morrow,'
said I, recovering rapidly from my despondency.
'Face? Well, I shall have to call upon Mrs. -, if that's
what you mean. A mere matter of form. I shall go over after
lunch. But it needn't interfere with your work. You can go
on with the "Anabasis" till I come back. And remember -
NEANISKOS is not a proper name, ha! ha! ha! The quadratics
will keep till the evening.' He was merry over his
prospects, and I was not altogether otherwise.
But there was no Xenophon, no algebra, that day! Dire was
the distress of my poor dominie when he found the mother as
much bewildered as the daughter was frightened, by the
mistake. 'She,' the daughter, 'had never for a moment
imagined, &c., &c.'
My tutor was not long disheartened by such caprices - so he
deemed them, as Miss Jemima's (she had a prettier name, you
may be sure), and I did my best (it cost me little now) to
encourage his fondest hopes. I proposed that we should drink
the health of the future mistress of Warham in tea, which he
cheerfully acceded to, all the more readily, that it gave him
an opportunity to vent one of his old college jokes. 'Yes,
yes,' said he, with a laugh, 'there's nothing like tea. TE
VENIENTE DIE, TE DECEDENTE CANEBAM.' Such sallies of
innocent playfulness often smoothed his path in life. He
took a genuine pleasure in his own jokes. Some men do. One
day I dropped a pot of marmalade on a new carpet, and should
certainly have been reprimanded for carelessness, had it not
occurred to him to exclaim: 'JAM SATIS TERRIS!' and then
laugh immoderately at his wit.
That there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of
it, was a maxim he acted upon, if he never heard it. Within a
month of the above incident he proposed to another lady upon
the sole grounds that, when playing a game of chess, an
exchange of pieces being contemplated, she innocently, but
incautiously, observed, 'If you take me, I will take you.'
He referred the matter next day to my ripe judgment. As I
had no partiality for the lady in question, I strongly
advised him to accept so obvious a challenge, and go down on
his knees to her at once. I laid stress on the knees, as the
accepted form of declaration, both in novels and on the
stage.
In this case the beloved object, who was not embarrassed by
excess of amiability, promptly desired him, when he urged his
suit, 'not to make a fool of himself.'
My tutor's peculiarities, however, were not confined to his
endeavours to meet with a lady rectoress. He sometimes
surprised his hearers with the originality of his abstruse
theories. One morning he called me into the stable yard to
join in consultation with his gardener as to the advisability
of killing a pig. There were two, and it was not easy to
decide which was the fitter for the butcher. The rector
selected one, I the other, and the gardener, who had nurtured
both from their tenderest age, pleaded that they should be
allowed to 'put on another score.' The point was warmly
argued all round.
'The black sow,' said I (they were both sows, you must know)
- 'The black sow had a litter of ten last time, and the white
one only six. Ergo, if history repeats itself, as I have
heard you say, you should keep the black, and sacrifice the
white.'
'But,' objected the rector, 'that was the white's first
litter, and the black's second. Why shouldn't the white do
as well as the black next time?'
'And better, your reverence,' chimed in the gardener. 'The
number don't allays depend on the sow, do it?'
'That is neither here nor there,' returned the rector.
'Well,' said the gardener, who stood to his guns, 'if your
reverence is right, as no doubt you will be, that'll make
just twenty little pigs for the butcher, come Michaelmas.'
'We can't kill 'em before they are born,' said the rector.
'That's true, your reverence. But it comes to the same
thing.'
'Not to the pigs,' retorted the rector.
'To your reverence, I means.'
'A pig at the butcher's,' I suggested, 'is worth a dozen
unborn.'
'No one can deny it,' said the rector, as he fingered the
small change in his breeches pocket; and pointing with the
other hand to the broad back of the black sow, exclaimed,
'This is the one, DUPLEX AGITUR PER LUMBOS SPINA! She's got
a back like an alderman's chin.'
'EPICURI DE GREGE PORCUS,' I assented, and the fate of the
black sow was sealed.
Next day an express came from Holkham, to say that Lady
Leicester had given birth to a daughter.
