“There are occasions in life,” he remarks, “when to acknowledge that our last meeting with a friend, who has since mysteriously disappeared, was to reject him and imply a preference for his uncle, may be calculated to associate us unpleasantly with that disappearance, in the minds of the censorious, and invite suspicions tending to our early cross-examination by our Irish local magistrate. I do not say, of course, that you actually destroyed my nephew for fear he should try to prejudice me against you; but I cannot withhold my earnest approval of your judicious pretence of a sentiment palpably incompatible with the shedding of the blood of its departed object. If you will move your dress a little, so that I can sit beside you and allow your head to rest upon my shoulder, that fan will do for both of us, and we may converse in whispers.”
“My head upon your shoulder!” exclaims Miss Potts, staring swiftly about to see if anybody is looking. “I prefer to keep my head upon my own shoulders, sir.”
“Two heads are better than one,” the Ritualistic organist reminds her. “If a little hair-oil and powder does come off upon my coat, the latter will wash, I suppose. Come, dearest, if it is our fate to never get through this hot day alive, let us be sunstruck together.”
She shrinks timidly from the brown linen arm which he begins insinuating along the back of the rustic settee, and tells him that she couldn’t have believed that he could be so absurd. He draws back his arm, and seems hurt.
“Flora,” he says, tenderly, “how beautiful you are, especially when fixed up. The more I see of yon, the less sorry I am that I have concluded to be yours. All the time that my dear boy was trying to induce you to relase him from his engagement, I was thinking how much better you might do; yet, beyond an occasional encouraging wink, I never gave the least sign of reciprocating your attachment. I did not think it would be right”
The assertion, though superficially true, is so imperfect in its delineation of habitual conduct liable to another construction, that the agitated Flowerpot returns, with quick indignation, “your arm was always reaching out whenever you sat in a chair anywhere near me, and whenever I sang you always kept looking straight into my mouth until it tickled me. You know you did, you hateful thing! Besides, it wasn’t you that I preferred, at all; it was—oh, it’s too ridiculous to tell!”
In her bashful confusion she is about to arise and trip shyly away from him into the house, when he speaks again.
“Miss Potts, is your friendship for Miss pendragon and her brother such, that their execution upon some Friday of next month would be a spectacle to which you could give no pleased attention?”
“What do you mean, you absurd creature?”
“I mean,” continues Mr. Bumstead, “simply this: you know my double loss. You know that, upon the person of the male pendragon was found an apple looking and tasting like one which my nephew once had. You know, that when Miss pendragon went from here she wore an alpaca waist which looked as though it had been exposed more than once to the rain.—See the point?”