This was the way it happened. Dr. Clatworthy, having notions of his own upon matrimony, and money to carry them out, had picked out a pretty child and adopted her, and set her to school with a Miss St. Maur of Saltash, to be trained up in his principles, till of an age to make him 'a perfect helpmeet,' as he called it.
The poor child—she was called Jessica Venning to begin with, but the doctor had rechristened her Sophia—was grown by this time into a young lady of seventeen, pretty and graceful. She could play upon the harp and paint in water-colours, and her needlework was a picture, but not half so pretty a picture as her face. She came from Devonshire, from the edge of the moors behind Newton Abbot, where the folks have complexions all cream-and-roses. She'd a figure like a wand for grace, and an eye half-melting, half-roguish. People might call Clatworthy a crank, or whatever word answered to it in those days: but he had made no mistake in choosing the material to make him a bride—or only this, that the poor girl couldn't bear the look or the thought of him. Well, the time was drawing on when Clatworthy, according to his plans, was to marry her, and to prepare her for it he had taken to writing her a letter every day, full of duty and mental improvement. Part of Nandy's business was to walk over with these letters to Saltash. The doctor explained to him that it would open the pores of his skin, and he must wait for an answer. And so it came about that Nandy saw Miss Sophia, and fell over head and ears in love with her.
But towards the end of the second week he felt that he could stand life at Hi-jeen Villa no longer—no, not even for the sake of seeing Miss Sophia daily.
"It's no use, miss," he told her very dolefully, as he delivered Friday's letter; "I've a-got to run for it, and I'm going to run for it to-morrow." He heaved a great sigh.
"But how foolish of you, Nandy!" said Miss Sophia, glancing up from the letter. "When you know it's doing you so much good!"
"Good?" said Nandy, savage-like. "How would you like it? There now— I'm sorry, Miss Sophia. I forgot—and now I've made you cry!"
"I—I sh—shan't like it at all," quavered Miss Sophia, blinking away her tears. "And—and it's not at all the same thing."
"No," agreed Nandy; "no, o' course not: you ha'n't got no pimples. Oh, Miss Sophia," he went on, speaking very earnest, "would you really like me better if I weren't so speckity?"
"Ever so much better, Nandy. You can't think what an improvement it would be."
"'Tis only skin-deep," said Nandy. "At the bottom of my heart, miss, I'd die for you.… But I can't stand it no longer. To-morrow I've made up my mind to run home to Merry-Garden: and there, if it gives you any pleasure, I can go on taking mud-baths on my own account."