"Marry yourself, then, you young scamp, and be hanged to you; you have my full consent if you can find a girl who will be fool enough to take you."
"Of course, I could not expect you to make the sacrifice; but though I am willing—entirely for your sake, I assure you—I shall not render it useless by asking some giddy and inexperienced girl. I shall seek some mature female, able and willing to cope with them——"
"Them?"
"The spiders. I have long known that they spun webs of immense size in and about our unfortunate dwelling; but I was not prepared to find that they attached them to our very persons." As he spoke he drew into sight a fabric hanging to the back of his uncle's coat. It was circular in shape, about the size of a dinner-plate, white in colour, and ingeniously woven out of thread in an open pattern with many interstices, by one of which it had fastened itself to the button at the back of the Colonel's coat as firmly as if it grew there.
"What the ——!" I spare my readers the expletives which, with the offending waif, the Colonel hurled at his nephew as the young man and his brothers exploded in laughter.
"I never was so surprised!" cried Mrs. Treadwell.
"I did not think anything in the matrimonial line could surprise you!" cried her husband.
"Not often; but Colonel Hayward and Marian Carter! I could hardly believe it. Mrs. Carter herself seems perfectly amazed, though of course she's delighted. I suppose she had given up all idea of Marian's marrying."
"She is a sweet little thing," said Mr. Treadwell; "I wonder she has not been married long ago."