"3. The survivor, if he is a bachelor, shall marry the wife of the one who falls. You are a bachelor, I believe, and so am I: thus this will not be very hard, and for my part I'm very glad; I shouldn't like to marry a disconsolate widow. I think we could fight on the college green, and Dr. Small might have a chair placed for him under the big tree to look on from—near his door, you know.
"I have the honor to be,
"Yours truly,
"Charles Hoffland.
VII.
"Mr. Hoffland:
"Your note is very strange. You ask me to advise you whom to take as your second; and then you lay down rules which I never heard of before. I suppose a gentleman can right his grievances without having to fight first and marry afterwards. What you write is so much like joking, that I don't know what to make of it. You seem to be very young and inexperienced, sir, and you say you have no friend but Mowbray.
"I'm obliged to you for your delicacy about Mowbray, but I cannot take it upon myself to advise any one else.—I hardly know how to write to you, for the whole thing seems a joke to you. If you were jesting in what you said, say so, sir, and we can shake hands. I don't want to take your blood for a joke, and especially as you are a stranger here.
"Your obed't serv't,
"J. Denis."
VIII.
"Joking, my dear fellow? Of course I was joking! Did you think I really was in earnest when I said that I was so handsome, and was engaged already, et cetera, and so forth, as one of my friends used to say? I was jesting! For on my sacred word of honor, I am not engaged to any one—and yet I could not marry Lucy. I am wedded already—to my own ideas! I am not my own master—and yet I have no mistress!
"But I ought not to be tiring you in this way. Why didn't you ask me if I was joking at first? Of course I was! I was laughing all the time and teasing you. It's enough to make me die a-laughing to think we were going to murder each other for joking. I was plaguing you! for I saw at once from what you said that you were hopelessly in——well, well! I won't tell your secrets.