Birsch: Well, Lady Artemis Morals has some gift for publicity. But Alfred won’t marry a title—say’s he rather thinks of making a title for himself. The boy’s got ambition. The cash is forthcoming. And you can do the rest.
Marge: It is a flattering offer. You’ll let me think over it?
He kindly consented, and we returned to the boat. However, on the way back the sea became very rough and unpleasant; and I threw up the idea.
(By the way, you don’t mind me writing the dialogue, as above, just as if it were a piece out of a play? I’ve always brought the sense of the theatre into real life.)
Poor Aaron Birsch! He was only one of the very many men who have been extremely anxious that I should marry somebody else. Two years later Alfred died of cerebral tumescence—a disease to which the ambitious are peculiarly liable. That cat, Millie Wyandotte, happened to say to Birsch that if I had married his son I should now have been a wealthy young widow.
“Anybody who married Marge,” said Birsch, “would not die at the end of two years.”
“I suppose not,” said Millie. “He’d be more likely to commit suicide at the end of one.”
I never did like that girl.
But I must speak now of what was perhaps my most serious engagement. Hugo Broke—his mother was one of the Stoneys—was intended from birth for one of the services and selected domestic service. Here it was thought that his height—he was seven foot one—would tell in his favour. However, the Duchess of Exminster, in ordering that the new footman should be dismissed, said that height was desirable, but that this was prolixity.