—let fly a sharp arrow at Molly Lowe; and her forty years' frost melted before the youthful charms of James Wright—a drum-boy in the First or Grenadier Regiment of Foot Guards, commanded by his Royal Highness the Duke of York!
The first notice her master received of this change in Molly Lowe's temperature he received in an anonymous letter, signed "Microscopicus;" which letter—after lamenting the multitude of sins that spring up everywhere like mushrooms—from the button to the broad black flap, informed him that Molly Lowe had fallen in love with the little drummer aforesaid, and earnestly recommended him to nip her iniquity in the bud. "And you need not take my ipse dixit in the matter at all," continued the letter of Mr. Microscopicus, "for if you will return home any evening unexpectedly, you will find Molly and her moppet junketing together on the contents of your larder."
The master had little faith in this epistle; for, as he said, the thing was so improbable; and he was half inclined to think that Mr. Microscopicus was either some meddling methodistical miscreant, or some discarded lover of Molly's youthful days. But well knowing that nothing is impossible, and that more unlikely matrons than Molly have been entangled in the toils of love, he put the epistle in his pocket, and determined to keep a sharp look-out on Molly's movements in future.
MOLLY LOWE.
Several days passed without his discovering anything; and he was just beginning to feel satisfied that Mr. Microscopicus was what he had supposed him to be, when, one evening, his curiosity was strangely excited by Molly's absence from her ordinary occupations.—What could be the meaning of it? Every time she was called, she came down from her bed-room, instead of up from the kitchen; and every time, she seemed more and more cross at being "call'd about so." "What can you be doing up stairs so much, Molly?" said her master. "Nothing," replied Molly. "Then what makes you go there so often?—What—have—you—got in your head, Molly?" "Lord bless me, nothing!" was Molly's invariable reply; and at every succeeding question she grew more waspish than before. But her master was not satisfied with this simple nothing—he felt quite sure there must be something wrong. So, calling his shopmen together, he ascended with them to Molly Lowe's bed-room; and there, to Molly Lowe's confusion, he found the identical drummer stowed away like Falstaff, in a buck-basket! There he lay—sword, cap, and belt, complete, coil'd up hilt to point, head to heel, in the bottom of the buck-basket, and covered over with a mountain of foul clothes!—"It was a miracle he escaped suffocation!" The buck-basket stood in a little closet, and they drew him forth from his——but "comparisons are odorous,"—it is enough, that they pulled him out, set him up on end, and shook him well; and that the master, turning to Molly Lowe, said "Molly! Molly! I never could have expected this!" "Bless me!" replied Molly Lowe—suffused with deep mahogany blushes, and bristling about like an angry turkey-cock—"Bless me! what a fuss there is about a bit of a boy!—He's my sister in law's own cousin, and I sent him up stairs because there were some ladies coming to look at the first floor; and where was the mighty harm of that?—And I'd have you to know, Sir, that you use me very ill, Sir!—and I won't bear it any longer, Sir! and"——And here she took out her handkerchief, held it to her eyes, and rushed out of the room in hysterics.
The enamoured drummer seemed quite dumbfounded by the catastrophe; he attempted no defence; and, as Molly's master was by no means satisfied with her matronly account of the matter, the poor youth—all reeking from his hot bed, was handed over to a constable who shut him up for the night in the cold and comfortless watch-house. Oh! what a miserable Molly must Molly Lowe have been that night!
In the morning the drummer was brought before the magistrate, to whom all these matters were related; and the constable added, that the drummer had confessed to him that he had often been to drink tea and sup with Molly Lowe; that she was over head-and-ears in love with him; that she had bought him a watch, with gold chain and seals, and had given him more than three pounds in money; and that she had assured him she was indeed his own cousin, by her sister-in-law's side, only seven times removed; but of that he knew nothing, having never heard of her till she met him one Sunday evening and asked him to come to tea.