Part 35 (2/2)

”Don't laugh at me!” urged the bashful and weak-minded

[AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 249]

young man; ”don't laugh at me! If you only knew what I feel when you laugh at me, you'd” -

”Cry, I dare say!” said Miss Patty, cutting him short with a merry smile, and (it must be confessed) a most wickedly-roguish expression about those bright flas.h.i.+ng hazel eyes of hers. ”Now, you haven't told me this wonderful secret!”

”Why,” said Mr. Verdant Green, slowly and deliberately - feeling that his time was coming on, and cowardly anxious still to fight off the fatal words - ”you said that you didn't dislike me; and, in fact, that you liked me very much; and” -

But here Miss Patty cut him short again. She turned sharply round upon him, with those bright eyes and that merry face, and said, ”Oh!

how ~can~ you say so? I never said anything of the sort!”

”Well,” said Mr. Verdant Green, who was now desperate, and mentally prepared to take the dreaded plunge into that throbbing sea that beats upon the strand of matrimony, ”whether ~you~ like ~me~ very much or not, ~I~ like ~you~ very much! - very much indeed! Ever since I saw you, since last Christmas, I've - I've liked you - very much indeed.”

Mr. Verdant Green, in a very hot and excited state, had, <vg249.jpg> while he was speaking, timidly brought his hand once more to Miss Patty's waist; and she did not interfere with its position. In fact, she was bending down her head, and was gazing intently on another knot that she had wilfully made in her hat-strings; and she was working so violently at that occupation of untying the knot, that very probably she might not have been aware of the situation of Mr.

Verdant Green's hand. At any rate, her own hands were too much busied to suffer her to interfere with his.

[250 ADVENTURES OF MR. VERDANT GREEN]

At last the climax had arrived. Mr. Verdant Green had screwed his courage to the sticking point, and had resolved to tell the secret of his love. He had got to the very edge of the precipice, and was on the point of jumping over head and ears into the stream of his destiny, and of bursting into any excited form of words that should make known his affection and his designs, when - when a vile perfume of tobacco, a sudden barking rush of Huz and Buz, and the horrid voice of little Mr. Bouncer, dispelled the bright vision, dispersed his ideas, and prevented the fulfilment of his purpose.

”Holloa, Giglamps!” roared the little gentleman, as he removed a short pipe from his mouth, and expelled an ascending curl of smoke; ”I've been looking for you everywhere! Here we are, - as Hamlet's uncle said, - all in the horchard! I hope he's not been pouring poison in ~your~ ear, Miss Honeywood; he looks rather guilty. The Mum - I mean your mother - sent me to find you. The luncheon's been on the table more than an hour!”

Luckily for Mr. Verdant Green and Miss Patty Honeywood, little Mr.

Bouncer rattled on without waiting for any reply to his observations, and thus enabled the young lady to somewhat recover her presence of mind, and to effect a hasty retreat from under the apple tree, and through the garden gate.

”I say, old feller,” said Mr. Bouncer, as he criticized Mr. Verdant Green's countenance over the bowl of his pipe, ”you look rather in a stew! What's up? My gum!” cried the little gentleman, as an idea of the truth suddenly flashed upon him; ”you don't mean to say you've been doing the spooney - what you call making love - have you?”

”Oh!” groaned the person addressed, as he followed out the train of his own ideas; ”if you ~had~ but have come five minutes later - or not at all! It's most provoking!”

”Well, you're a grateful bird, I don't think!” said Mr. Bouncer. ”Cut after her into luncheon, and have it out over the cold mutton and pickles!”

”Oh no!” responded the luckless lover; ”I can't' eat - especially before the others! I mean - I couldn't talk to her before the others.

Oh! I don't know what I'm saying.”

”Well, I don't think you do, old feller!” said Mr. Bouncer, puffing away at his pipe. ”I'm sorry I was in the road, though! because, though I fight shy of those sort of things myself, yet I don't want to interfere with the little weaknesses of other folks. But come and have a pipe, old feller, and we'll talk matters over, and see what pips are on the cards, and what's the state of the game.”

Now, a pipe was Mr. Bouncer's panacea for every kind of indisposition, both mental and bodily.

[AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 251]

CHAPTER V.

MR. VERDANT GREEN MEETS WITH THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER.

<vg251.jpg> MENTION had frequently been made by the members of the Honeywood family, but more especially by Miss Patty, of a cousin - a male cousin - to whom they all seemed to be exceedingly partial - far more partial, as Mr. Verdant Green thought, with regard to Miss Patty, than he would have wished her to have been. This cousin was Mr. Frank Delaval, a son of their father's sister. According to their description, he possessed good looks, and an equivalently good fortune, with all sorts of accomplishments, both useful and ornamental; and was, in short (in their eyes at least), a very admirable Crichton of the nineteenth century.

Mr. Verdant Green had heard from Miss Patty so much of her cousin Frank, and of the pleasure they were antic.i.p.ating from a visit he had promised shortly to make to them, that he had at length begun to suspect that the young lady's maiden meditations were not altogether ”fancy free,” and that her thoughts dwelt upon this handsome cousin far more than was palatable to Mr. Verdant Green's feelings. In the most unreasonable manner, therefore, he conceived a violent antipathy to Mr. Frank Delaval, even before he had set eyes upon him, and considered that the Honeywood family had, one and all, greatly overrated him. But these suppositions and suspicions made him doubly anxious to come to an understanding with Miss Patty before the arrival of the dreaded Adonis; and it was this thought that had helped to nerve him through the terrors of the orchard scene, and which, but for Mr. Bouncer's ~malapropos~ intrusion, would have brought things to a crisis.

However, after he had had a talk with Mr. Bouncer, and had been fortified by that little gentleman's pithy admonitions to ”go in and win,” and to ”strike while the iron's hot,” and that ”faint heart never won a nice young 'ooman,” he determined to seek out Miss Patty at once, and bring to an end their unfinished conversation. For this purpose he returned to the hall, where he found a great commotion, and a carriage at the door; and out of the carriage jumped a handsome young man, with a black moustache, who ran up to the open hall-door (where Miss Patty

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