“What do I offer? I? Why, surely you can’t misunderstand me, you cannot fail to know that all this time I’ve been offering MYSELF!”
“I see ‘myself,’ in large capitals, I suppose.” Sam Storth looked, as he doubtless felt, somewhat nonplussed by this reception of what he assured himself was an uncommonly handsome offer.
“Yourself!” continued the object of his well-regulated affections; “h’m, yourself. That’s so comprehensive as to be a trifling vague. You were good enough to enter into detailed particulars, quite a bill of quantities, or particular invoice of what should be included in the self, the other self besides yourself, on which you would deign to lavish the treasures of your heart. Cannot you be a little more precise as to what is included in YOURSELF? What’s to be the quid pro quo for my good figure, my fair face, my excellent understanding and my manners of a duchess? Is it to be par example your good figure?”
Now, it has been said that Mr. Storth, however excellent a lawyer, was no Adonis.
He winced and sate silent.
“Your fair face?”
Again Mr. Storth winced and found no words.
“Your excellent understanding? Your manners? I suppose they should be ducal to match mine?”
“Oh, hang it all, Miss Wrigley! I think you’re piling it on a bit too thick. I don’t set up for a beauty, though I’ve had my successes,” Sam added, in parenthesis.
“So I understand. In the coulisses of the music-hall.”