"I prefer on occasion to call 'a spade a spade,' Aunt Elizabeth. Well, uncle, shall it be as to her self-reliant spirit, and that she (being a mistake which means anything) has fled to that broad and convenient field, the United States of America?"
"Yes, that will pass; but I scarcely think he will inquire, as he has never troubled himself about his betrothed or yourself until you hunted him up."
"At your instigation; so disinterested in you, never thinking of the feathers for your own nest."
"The suburban train is due!" exclaimed her aunt. "Do, Margaret, endeavor to act like a Christian."
"Never fear, Aunt Elizabeth; I shall act my part as well as you do, with self-interest as motive-power: our sex play without a prompter; and now to the drawing-room to awe the ignorant Colonial by our British gold and conventionalities."
CHAPTER VIII.
A TROUBLED SPIRIT.
With mingled feelings of disinclination and repulsion, also an undefined sense of dread and reluctance, poor C. Babbington-Cole left the City of Chicago and, again on terra firma, made his way up from the seaboard to London, where at Morley's Hotel he and his father had arranged to meet. "Hang it," he thought moodily, "I feel like an infernal frog out of Acheron, covered with the ooze and mud of melancholy. Jove, if I could only chance upon the Will Smyths or Mrs. Gower, what a tonic they would be; how they would enjoy this madding crowd with all the world abroad, with no blue blood in the beef they eat either; judging from red cheeks and stout ankles. What women! cotton batting would not be a safe investment here; I hope the governor is waiting for me at Morley's, but he must be, as he took the Circassian from Quebec on the 16th. I'll persuade him not to go out to Bayswater at all, but to abandon this debt of honor, as in his sensitive nature he dubs his promise to a dead woman, for I have no hankering after a martyr's crown. If I am coerced (for I am made of very limp stuff) into this union and she is not a girl I can care to spoon over, and must 'write me down as an ass' for selling my liberty to, then adieu to wedded bliss—I shall again content myself in a den by myself, and my craze for mechanism shall be my wife and my few real friends my mistress. Jove! though, I must strain my eyes and endeavor to see a glimmer of light in the black clouds; if she be a girl after my own heart she will sympathize after a more practical manner than did the 'twenty with Bunthorn,' in giving me the dollar to develop, and obtain a patent for one or other of my inventions. Yes, I'll be a soldier. I am nearing the battle-field; with the smell of powder in my nostrils, I will gain strength. Cabby is reining in his steed, so this, I suppose, is my hotel."
"Morley's, sir; and 'ere be a porter for your baggage, sir."