“I wonder, my dear sir, you did not think of adding a sentiment!” cried I, a little pertly.
“And if I had, it would have been such a one as no woman need be ashamed to hear attached to her name. But enough of this; I have given Peggy Perott, and you are bound to drink her”—that we had done already; “and now, cousin, as I have passed through the fiery furnace—”
“Unscathed?” demanded Lucy, laughing ready to kill herself.
“Yes, unscathed, miss: and now, cousin, I ask of you to honour us with a toast.”
Mrs. Bradfort had been a widow many years, and was fortified with the panoply of her state. Accustomed to such appeals, which, when she was young and handsome, had been of much more frequent occurrence than of late, she held her glass for the wine with perfect self-possession, and gave her toast with the conscious dignity of one who had often been solicited in vain “to change her condition.”
“I will give you,” she said, raising her person and her voice, as if to invite scrutiny, “my dear old friend, good Dr. Wilson.”
It was incumbent on a single person to give another who was also single; and the widow had been true to the usage; but “good Dr. Wilson” was a half-superannuated clergyman, whom no one could suspect of inspiring anything beyond friendship.
“Dear me—dear me!” cried Mr. Hardinge, earnestly; “how much more thoughtful, Mrs. Bradfort, you are than myself! Had I thought a moment, I might have given the Doctor; for I studied with him, and honour him vastly.”
This touch of simplicity produced another laugh—how easily we all laughed that night!—and it caused a little more confusion in the excellent divine. Mrs. Bradfort then called on me, as was her right; but I begged that Rupert might precede me, he knowing more persons, and being now a sort of man of the world.
“I will give the charming Miss Winthrop,” said Rupert, without a moment's hesitation, tossing off his glass with an air that said, “how do you like that?”