"Then hand it me over, and save yourself the penny stamp." In his confusion he gave her the letter, and threw himself down on the sofa while she read it. "You have been very careful in choosing your language, Mr. Prosper: 'It will be expedient that I should make known to you the entire truth.' Certainly, Mr. Prosper, certainly. The entire truth is the best thing,—next to entire beer, my brother would say." "The horrid vulgar woman!" Mr. Prosper ejaculated to himself. "'There seems to have been a complete misunderstanding with regard to that amiable lady, Miss Tickle.' No misunderstanding at all. You said you liked her, and I supposed you did. And when I had been living for twenty years with a female companion, who hasn't sixpence in the world to buy a rag with but what she gets from me, was it to be expected that I should turn her out for any man?"
"An annuity might have been arranged, Miss Thoroughbung."
"Bother an annuity! That's all you think about feelings! Was she to go and live alone and desolate because you wanted some one to nurse you? And then those wretched ponies. I tell you, Peter Prosper, that let me marry whom I will, I mean to drive a pair of ponies, and am able to do so out of my own money. Ponies, indeed! It's an excuse. Your heart has failed you. You've come to know a woman of spirit, and now you are afraid that she'll be too much for you. I shall keep this letter, though it has not been sent."
"You can do as you please about that, Miss Thoroughbung."
"Oh yes; of course I shall keep it, and shall give it to Messrs. Soames & Simpson. They are most gentlemanlike men, and will be shocked at such conduct as this from the Squire of Buston. The letter will be published in the newspapers, of course. It will be very painful to me, no doubt, but I shall owe it to my sex to punish you. When all the county are talking of your conduct to a lady, and saying that no man could have done it, let alone no gentleman, then you will feel it. Miss Tickle,—and a pair of ponies! You expected to get my money and nothing to give for it. Oh, you mean man!"
She must have been aware that every word she spoke was a dagger. There was a careful analysis of his peculiar character displayed in every word of reproach which she uttered. Nothing could have wounded him more than the comparison between himself and Soames & Simpson. They were gentlemen! "The vulgarest men in all Buntingford!" he declared to himself, and always ready for any sharp practice. Whereas he was no man, Miss Thoroughbung said,—a mean creature, altogether unworthy to be regarded as a gentleman. He knew himself to be Mr. Prosper of Buston Hall, with centuries of Prospers for his ancestors; whereas Soames was the son of a tax-gatherer, and Simpson had come down from London as a clerk from a solicitor's office in the City. And yet it was true that people would talk of him as did Miss Thoroughbung! His cruelty would be in every lady's mouth. And then his stinginess about the ponies would be the gossip of the county for twelve months. And, as he found out what Miss Thoroughbung was, the disgrace of even having wished to marry her loomed terribly large before him.
But there was a twinkle of jest in the lady's eyes all the while which he did not perceive, and which, had he perceived it, he could not have understood. Her anger was but simulated wrath. She, too, had thought that it might be well, under circumstances, if she were to marry Mr. Prosper, but had quite understood that those circumstances might not be forthcoming. "I don't think it will do at all, my dear," she had said to Miss Tickle. "Of course an old bachelor like that won't want to have you."
"I beg you won't think of me for a moment," Miss Tickle had answered, with solemnity.
"Bother! why can't you tell the truth? I'm not going to throw you over, and of course you'd be just nowhere if I did. I shan't break my heart for Mr. Prosper. I know I should be an old fool if I were to marry him; and he is more of an old fool for wanting to marry me. But I did think he wouldn't cut up so rough about the ponies." And then, when no answer came to the last letter from Soames & Simpson, and the tidings reached her, round from the brewery, that Mr. Prosper intended to be off, she was not in the least surprised. But the information, she thought, had come to her in an unworthy manner. So she determined to punish the gentleman, and went out to Buston Hall and called him Peter Prosper. We may doubt, however, whether she had ever realized how terribly her scourges would wale him.
"And to think that you would let it come round to me in that way, through the young people,—writing about it just as a joke!"