damaged their characters, if anything, by over-indulgence. My dear, it never caught even a curate! I am not one of those women to run down men; I think them delightful creatures, and in a general way I find them very intelligent. But where their hearts are concerned it is the girl with the frizzy hair, who wants two people to help her over the stile, that is their idea of an angel. No man could fall in love with me; he couldn't if he tried. That I can understand; but'--Miss Ramsbotham sunk her voice to a more confidential tone--'what I cannot understand is that I have never fallen in love with any man, because I like them all.'
'You have given the explanation yourself,' suggested the bosom friend--one Susan Fossett, the 'Aunt Emma' of The Ladies' Journal, a nice woman, but talkative. 'You are too sensible.'
Miss Ramsbotham shook her head, 'I should just love to fall in love. When I think about it, I feel quite ashamed of myself for not having done so.'
Whether it was this idea, namely, that it was her duty, or whether it was that passion came to her, unsought, somewhat late in life, and therefore all the stronger, she herself would perhaps have been unable to declare. Certain only it is that at over thirty years of age this clever, sensible, clear-seeing woman fell to sighing and blushing, starting and stammering at the sounding of a name, as though for all the world she had been a love-sick girl in her teens.
Susan Fossett, her bosom friend, brought the strange tidings to Bohemia one foggy November afternoon, her opportunity being a tea-party given by Peter Hope to commemorate the birthday of his adopted daughter and sub- editor, Jane Helen, commonly called Tommy. The actual date of Tommy's birthday was known only to the gods; but out of the London mist to wifeless, childless Peter she had come the evening of a certain November the eighteenth, and therefore by Peter and his friends November the eighteenth had been marked upon the calendar as a day on which they should rejoice together.
'It is bound to leak out sooner or later,' Susan Fossett was convinced, 'so I may as well tell you: that gaby Mary Ramsbotham has got herself engaged.'
'Nonsense!' was Peter Hope's involuntary ejaculation.
'Precisely what I mean to tell her the very next time I see her,' added Susan.
'Who to?' demanded Tommy.
'You mean 'to whom.' The preeposition governs the objective case,' corrected her James Douglas McTear, commonly called 'The Wee Laddie,' who himself wrote English better than he spoke it.
'I meant 'to whom,'' explained Tommy.
'Ye didna say it,' persisted the Wee Laddie.
'I don't know to whom,' replied Miss Ramsbotham's bosom friend, sipping tea and breathing indignation. 'To something idiotic and incongruous that will make her life a misery to her.'
Somerville, the briefless, held that in the absence of all data such conclusion was unjustifiable.
'If it had been to anything sensible,' was Miss Fossett's opinion, 'she would not have kept me in the dark about it, to spring it upon me like a bombshell. I've never had so much as a hint from her until I received this absurd scrawl an hour ago.'
Miss Fossett produced from her bag a letter written in pencil.
'There can be no harm in your hearing it,' was Miss Fossett's excuse; 'it will give you an idea of the state of the poor thing's mind.'
The tea-drinkers left their cups and gathered round her. 'Dear Susan,' read Miss Fossett, 'I shall not be able to be with you to-morrow. Please get me out of it nicely. I can't remember at the moment what it is. You'll be surprised to hear that I'm ENGAGED--to be married, I mean, I can hardly REALISE it. I hardly seem to know where I am. Have just made up my mind to run down to Yorkshire and see grandmamma. I must do SOMETHING. I must TALK to SOMEBODY and--forgive me, dear--but you ARE so sensible, and just now--well I don't FEEL sensible. Will tell you all about it when I see you--next week, perhaps. You must TRY to like him. He is SO handsome and REALLY clever--in his own way. Don't scold me. I never thought it possible that ANYONE could be so happy. It's quite a different sort of happiness to ANY other sort of happiness. I don't know how to describe it. Please ask Burcot to let me off the antequarian congress. I feel I should do it badly. I am so thankful he has NO relatives--in England. I should have been so TERRIBLY nervous. Twelve hours ago I could not have DREAMT of it, and now I walk on tiptoe for fear of waking up. Did I leave my chinchilla at your rooms? Don't be angry with me. I should have told you if I had known. In haste. Yours, Mary.'
'It's dated from Marylebone Road, and yesterday afternoon she did leave her chinchilla in my rooms, which makes me think it really must be from Mary Ramsbotham. Otherwise I should have my doubts,' added Miss Fossett, as she folded up the letter and replaced it in her bag.
'Id is love!' was the explanation of Dr. William Smith, his round, red face illuminated with poetic ecstasy. 'Love has gone to her--has dransformed her once again into the leedle maid.'
'Love,' retorted Susan Fossett, 'doesn't transform an intelligent, educated woman into a person who writes a letter all in jerks, underlines every other word, spells antiquarian with an 'e,' and Burcott's name, whom she has known for the last eight years, with only one 't.' The woman has gone stark, staring mad!'
'We must wait until we have seen him,' was Peter's judicious view. 'I should be so glad to think that the dear lady was happy.'
'So should I,' added Miss Fossett drily.
'One of the most sensible women I have ever met,' commented William Clodd. 'Lucky man, whoever he is. Half wish I'd thought of it myself.'
'I am not saying that he isn't,' retorted Miss Fossett. 'It isn't him I'm worrying about.'
'I preesume you mean 'he,'' suggested the Wee Laddie. 'The verb 'to be'--'
'For goodness' sake,' suggested Miss Fossett to Tommy, 'give that man something to eat or drink. That's the worst of people who take up grammar late in life. Like all converts, they become fanatical.'
'She's a ripping good sort, is Mary Ramsbotham,' exclaimed Grindley junior, printer and publisher of Good Humour. 'The marvel to me is that no man hitherto has ever had the sense to want her.'
'Oh, you men!' cried Miss Fossett. 'A pretty face and an empty head is all you want.'
'Must they always go together?' laughed Mrs. Grindley junior, nee Helvetia Appleyard.
'Exceptions prove the rule,' grunted Miss Fossett.
'What a happy saying that is,' smiled Mrs. Grindley junior. 'I wonder sometimes how conversation was ever carried on before it was invented.'
'De man who would fall in love wid our dear frent Mary,' thought Dr. Smith, 'he must be quite egsceptional.'
'You needn't talk about her as if she was a monster--I mean were,' corrected herself Miss Fossett, with a hasty glance towards the Wee Laddie. 'There isn't a man I know that's worthy of her.'
'I mean,' explained the doctor, 'dat he must be a man of character--of brain. Id is de noble man dat is attracted by de noble woman.'
'By the chorus-girl more often,' suggested Miss Fossett.
'We must hope for the best,' counselled Peter. 'I cannot believe that a clever, capable woman like Mary Ramsbotham would make a fool of herself.'
'From what I have seen,' replied Miss Fossett, 'it's just the clever people--as regards this particular matter--who do make fools of themselves.'
Unfortunately Miss Fossett's judgment proved to be correct. On being introduced a fortnight later to Miss Ramsbotham's fiance, the impulse of Bohemia was to exclaim, 'Great Scott! Whatever in the name of--' Then on catching sight of Miss Ramsbotham's transfigured face and trembling hands Bohemia recollected itself in time to murmur instead: 'Delighted, I'm sure!' and to offer mechanical congratulations. Reginald Peters was a pretty but remarkably foolish-looking lad of about two-and-twenty, with curly hair and receding chin; but to Miss Ramsbotham evidently a promising Apollo. Her first meeting with him had taken place at one of the many political debating societies then in fashion, attendance at which Miss Ramsbotham found useful for purposes of journalistic 'copy.' Miss Ramsbotham, hitherto a Radical of pronounced views, he had succeeded under three months in converting into a strong supporter of the Gentlemanly Party. His feeble political platitudes, which a little while before she would have seized upon merrily to ridicule, she now sat drinking in, her plain face suffused with admiration. Away from him and in connection with those subjects--somewhat numerous--about which he knew little and cared less, she retained her sense and humour; but in his presence she remained comparatively speechless, gazing up into his somewhat watery eyes with the grateful expression of one learning wisdom from a master.
