Miss Helen Convolvulus was a charming young lady, with a hare-lip and six thousand a-year.  To Miss Helen Convolvulus then our hero paid his addresses.

Heavens! what an uproar her relations made about the matter.  “Easy to see his intentions,” said one:  “a handsome fortune-hunter, who wants to make the best of his person!”—­“handsome is that handsome does,” says another; “he was turned out of the army, and murdered his colonel;”—­“never marry a beauty,” said a third;—­“he can admire none but himself;”—­“will have so many mistresses,” said a fourth;—­“make you perpetually jealous,” said a fifth;—­“spend your fortune,” said a sixth;—­“and break your heart,” said a seventh.

Miss Helen Convolvulus was prudent and wary.  She saw a great deal of justice in what was said; and was sufficiently contented with liberty and six thousand a-year, not to be highly impatient for a husband; but our heroine had no aversion to a lover; especially to so handsome a lover as Mr. Ferdinand Fitzroy.  Accordingly she neither accepted nor discarded him; but kept him on hope, and suffered him to get into debt with his tailor, and his coach-maker.  On the strength of becoming Mr. Fitzroy Convolvulus.  Time went on, and excuses and delays were easily found; however, our hero was sanguine, and so were his parents.  A breakfast at Chiswick, and a putrid fever carried off the latter, within one week of each other; but not till they had blessed Mr. Ferdinand Fitzroy, and rejoiced that they had left him so well provided for.

Now, then, our hero depended solely upon the crabbed old uncle and Miss Helen Convolvulus; the former, though a baronet and a satirist was a banker and a man of business:—­he looked very distastefully at the Hyperian curls and white teeth of Mr. Ferdinand Fitzroy.

“If I make you my heir,” said he—­“I expect you will continue the bank.”

“Certainly, sir!” said the nephew.

“Humph!” grunted the uncle, “a pretty fellow for a banker!”

Debtors grew pressing to Mr. Ferdinand Fitzroy, and Mr. Ferdinand Fitzroy grew pressing to Miss Helen Convolvulus.  “It is a dangerous thing,” said she, timidly, “to marry a man so admired,—­will you always be faithful?”

“By heaven!” cried the lover.

“Heigho!” sighed Miss Helen Convolvulus, and Lord Rufus Pumilion entering, the conversation was changed.

But the day of the marriage was fixed; and Mr. Ferdinand Fitzroy bought a new curricle.  By Apollo, how handsome he looked in it!  A month before the wedding day the uncle died.  Miss Helen Convolvulus was quite tender in her condolences—­“Cheer up, my Ferdinand,” said she, “for your sake, I have discarded Lord Rufus Pumilion!” “Adorable condescension!” cried our hero;—­“but Lord Rufus Pumilion is only four feet two, and has hair like a peony.”

“All men are not so handsome as Mr. Ferdinand Fitzroy!” was the reply.

Away goes our hero, to be present at the opening of his uncle’s will.