“I didn’t remain there till any men came. I got it out and drove it home.”
“What a wonderful man! But then you’re English. However, you can understand that if I had left my driver he would have been disgraced. If ever I go out anywhere with you, Mr. Green, I’ll come home with you. At any rate it sha’n’t be my fault if I don’t.” After that I couldn’t be angry with her, and so we became great friends.
Shortly afterwards the crash came; but Miss Gledd seemed to disregard the crash altogether, and held her own in Boston. As far as I could see there were just as many men desirous of marrying her as ever, and among the number Hannibal H. Hoskins was certainly no defaulter.
My acquaintance with Boston had become intimate; but, after awhile, I went away for twelve months, and when I returned, Miss Gledd was still Miss Gledd. “And what of Hoskins?” I said to my friend,—the same friend who had been with me in the sleighing expedition.
“He’s just on the old tack. I believe he proposes once a-year regularly. But they say now that she’s going to marry an Englishman.”
It was not long before I had an opportunity of renewing my friendship with Miss Gledd,—for our acquaintance had latterly amounted to a friendship,—and of seeing the Englishman with her. As it happened, he also was a friend of my own,—an old friend, and the last man in the world whom I should have picked out as a husband for Ophelia. He was a literary man of some mark, fifteen years her senior, very sedate in his habits, not much given to love-making, and possessed of a small fortune sufficient for his own wants, but not sufficient to enable him to marry with what he would consider comfort. Such was Mr. Pryor, and I was given to understand that Mr. Pryor was a suppliant at the feet of Ophelia. He was a suppliant, too, with so much hope, that Hannibal Hoskins and the other suitors were up in arms against him. I saw them together at some evening assembly, and on the next morning I chanced to be in Miss Gledd’s drawing-room. On my entrance there were others there, but the first moment that we were alone, she turned round sharp upon me with a question,—
“You know your countryman, Mr. Pryor; what sort of a man is he?”
“But you know him also,” I answered. “If the rumours in Boston are true, he is already a favourite in Chesnut Street.”
“Well, then, for once in a way the rumours in Boston are true, for he is a favourite. But that is no reason you shouldn’t tell me what sort of a man he is. You’ve known him these ten years.”
“Pretty nearly twenty,” I said. I had known him ten or twelve.