She looked quite bright and sparkling; she had made a much more careful evening toilette than usual.
“Making fun!” said Gibbs, taking her hand. “I should be more inclined to make love,” he said; “for you certainly are the prettiest girl I have seen this many a day.”
This was quite up to Christabel’s taste—the most delicious bit of flattery she had ever heard.
“I declare positively you have quite made a fool of me—haw—to-night,” he went on, showing his teeth again. “You are not offended at my saying so?”
“Not I,” said Christabel. “What is there to be offended at?”
There was a charcoal stove in the show, and Gibbs drew the young lady of the mystic cups to a seat beside it, and thereupon told her that he had fallen madly in love with her; that he was a gentleman, though a poor one; that if she felt she could love him in return, he would marry her. But she must keep what he had said to her a secret from her father.
Then he dexterously drew from her an account of her life; the story of Dibble’s joining the exhibition; and, above all, an account of the quarrel with her father; and finally, after a lengthened conversation, he escorted her to the little lodging close by, Momus being left to mind the show, after Christabel had duly locked up the side-door, extinguished the light, and let down the platform.
Gibbs was scrupulously attentive and gallant to the girl, and when he left her she promised to give him an answer next day upon the momentous question of elopement and marriage.
It was a rapid courtship this, but cleverly done; and Gibbs, you see, had had a large experience in this way. Christabel was so much impressed that she went up the dirty creaking stairs, and paraded before about twelve inches of looking-glass, by the light of a tallow candle.
Her father, when he returned home that night, was unusually bumptious in his manner towards Christabel, his daughter, and more than usually tipsy. Dibble had obtained a partial promise from Mrs. Dibble that the showman should not want for fifty pounds, and before that, as we have seen, a “gent” had given him similar hopes. Everything was going well with him, and he was independent of everybody; his daughter, too, felt particularly independent that night, and the result was a wordy warfare about the Skeleton.