I refrain from quoting the precise expressions, lest in circumstances so serious a smile of passing levity should cross those dear features, now all tension with anxiety for your own Mary Anne. The letter was from Adolf von Wolfenschafer, making me an offer of his hand, title, and fortune! I swooned away when I heard it, and only recovered to hear papa still spelling out the strange phraseology of the letter.
I wish he had not written in English, Kitty. It is provoking that an event so naturally serious in itself should be alloyed with the dross of grammatical absurdities; besides that, really, our tongue does not lend itself to those delicate and half-vanishing allusions to future bliss so germane to such a proposal. Papa, and James, too, I must say, evinced a want of regard to my feelings, and an absence of that fine sympathy which I should have looked for at a moment like this. They actually screamed with laughter, Kitty, at little lapses of orthography, when the subject might reasonably have imposed far different emotions.
"Why, it's a proposal of marriage!" exclaimed papa, "and I thought it a summons from the police."
"Egad, so it is!" cried James. "It's an offer to you, Mary Anne. 'The Baron Adolf von Wolfenschàfer, Frei-herr von Schweinbraten and Ritter of the Order of the Cock of Tubingen, maketh hereby, and not the less, that with future-coming-time-to-be-proved-and-experienced affection, the profound humility of an offer of himself, with all his to-be-named-and-enumerated belongings, both in effects and majorats, to the lovely and very beautiful Miss, the first daughter of the Venerable and very Honorable the Lord Dodd de Dodsborough.'"
"Pray stop, James," said I; "this is scarcely a fitting matter for coarse jesting, nor is my heart to be made the theme for indelicate banter."
"The letter is a gem," said he, and went on: "'The so-named A. von W., overflowing with a mild but in-heaven-soaring and never-to-earth-descending love, expecteth, in all the pendulating anxieties of a never-at-any-moment-to-be-distrusted devotion—'"
"Papa, I really beg and request that I may not be trifled with in this unfeeling manner. The Baron's intentions are sufficiently clear and explicit, nor are we now engaged in the work of correcting his English epistolary style."
This I said haughtily, Kitty; and Mister James at last thought proper to recover some respect for my feelings.