“Read ’em out, then, can’t ye?” cried another.
“I say, Bill Blunt, I think this consarns you,” cried Tom: “isn’t your sweetheart’s name Susan Croft?”
“That’s a fact,” said Bill, looking up from his paper, “and who has got a word to say agin the prettiest lass in all Liverpool?”
“Nobody’s got a word to say against her,” replied Tom; “but she’s married, that’s all.”
Bill Blunt leaped up as if he had been shot, and the blood rushed to his face, as he seized the paper, and tried to find the place.
“Where is it, Tom? let me see it with my own two eyes. Oh, here it is!”
The poor man’s face grew paler and paler as he read the following words:—
“Married at Liverpool, on the 5th inst, by the Reverend Charles Manson, Edward Gordon, Esquire, to Susan, youngest daughter of Admiral Croft—”
A perfect roar of laughter drowned the remainder of the sentence.
“Well done, Bill Blunt—Mister Blunt, we’ll have to call him hereafter,” said Tom, with a grim smile; “I had no notion you thought so much o’ yourself as to aim at an admiral’s daughter.”