"Tell 'em a military man; all girls have the scarlet fever."
"Very well—'an Officer in the Queen's, of considerable personal attractions——'"
"My dear fellow, pray don't!" expostulated Belle, in extreme alarm; "we shall have such swarms of 'em!"
"No, no! we must say that," persisted Gower—"'personal attractions, aged eight-and-twenty——'"
"Can't you put it, 'in the flower of his age,' or his 'sixth lustre'? It's so much more poetic."
"'—the flower of his age,' then (that'll leave 'em a wide range from twenty to fifty, according to their taste), 'is desirous of meeting a young lady of beauty, talent, and good family,'—eh?"
"Yes. All women think themselves beauties, if they're as ugly as sin. Milliners and confectioner girls talk Anglo-French, and rattle a tin-kettle piano after a fashion, and anybody buys a 'family' for half-a-crown at the Heralds' Office—so fire away."
"'—who, feeling as he does the want of a kindred heart and sympathetic soul, will accord him the favor of a letter or an interview, as a preliminary to the greatest step in life.'"
"A step—like one on thin ice—very sure to bring a man to grief," interpolated Belle. "Say something about property; those soul-and-spirit young ladies generally keep a look-out for tin, and only feel an elective affinity for a lot of debentures and consols."
"'The advertiser being a man of some present and still more prospective wealth, requires no fortune, the sole objects of his search being love and domestic felicity.' Domestic felicity—how horrible! Don't it sound exactly like the end of a lady's novel, where the unlucky hero is always brought to an untimely end in a 'sweet cottage on the banks of the lovely Severn.'"