"So nice!" says Mary, who seems quite glad to talk about him, "and as ugly as myself," with a little enjoyable laugh, "so we can't call each other bad names; and his name is Peter, which of course will be considered another drawback, though I like the name myself. And we are very fond of each other—I have no doubt about that: and that is all, I think."
"No, it is not all," says Madam O'Connor, severely. "May I ask when you met this young man?"
"I must take the sting out of your tone at once, Gertrude," says her cousin, pleasantly, "by telling you that we were engaged long before poor Richard died." (Richard was the scampish brother by whose death she inherited all.)
"Then why didn't you marry him?" says Madam.
"I was going to,—in fact, we were going to run away," says Miss Browne, with intense enjoyment at the now remote thought,—"doesn't it sound absurd?—when—when the news about Dick reached us, and then I could not bring myself to leave my father, no matter how unpleasant my home be."
"What is he?" asks Olga, with a friendly desire to know.
"A doctor. In rather good practice, too, in Dublin. He is very clever," says Miss Browne, telling her story so genially, so comfortably, that all their hearts go out to her, and Madam O'Connor grows lost in a revery about what will be the handsomest and most suitable thing to give "Peter" as a wedding-present. As she cannot get beyond a case of dissecting-knives, this revery is short.
"Perhaps if you saw some one else you might change your mind," she says, a new thought entering her head (of course there would be a difficulty about offering dissecting-knives to a barrister or quiet country gentleman).
"I have had five proposals this year already," says Miss Browne, quietly, "but, if I could be a princess by doing so, I would not give up Peter."
"Mary Browne, come here and give me a kiss," says Madam O'Connor, with tears in her eyes. "You are the best girl I know, and I always said it. I only hope your Peter knows the extent of his luck."