I had expected that these questions would confound Mr Peacock, but if there really were anything in them to cause embarrassment, the ci-devant actor was too practised in his profession to exhibit it. He merely smiled, and smoothing jauntily a very tumbled shirt-front, he said, "Oh sir, fie!
'Of this matter,
Is little Cupid's crafty arrow made.'
If you must know my love affairs, that young woman is, as the vulgar say, my sweetheart."
"Your sweetheart!" I exclaimed, greatly relieved, and acknowledging at once the probability of the statement. "Yet," I added suspiciously—"yet, if so, why should she expect Mr Gower to write to her?"
"You're quick of hearing, sir; but though
'All adoration, duty, and observance;
All humbleness, and patience, and impatience,'
the young woman will not marry a livery servant—proud creature, very proud!—and Mr Gower, you see, knowing how it was, felt for me, and told her, if I may take such liberty with the Swan, that she should
——'Never lie by Johnson's side
With an unquiet soul,'
for that he would get me a place in the Stamps! The silly girl said she would have it in black and white—as if Mr Gower would write to her!"
"And now, sir," continued Mr Peacock, with a simpler gravity, "you are at liberty, of course, to say what you please to my lady, but I hope you'll not try to take the bread out of my mouth because I wear a livery, and am fool enough to be in love with a waiting-woman—I, sir, who could have married ladies who have played the first parts in life—on the metropolitan stage."