"INNINGS CLOSED."
THE CONFESSIONS OF A DUFFER.
No. XI.—THE DUFFER IN LOVE.
Mrs. McDUFFER never greatly admired the lady with whom this confession is concerned. She denies that CECILIA BRAND was pretty, and when I do not answer (for where is the use of argument in such a case?), she remarks that I am too short-sighted to know whether a woman is pretty or not. This appears to myself to be an injudicious assertion, and the flank of my opponent might be turned if it were worth while. But it is not worth while. A Duffer I may be, but not such a duffer as to reason with a woman. If you score a point (and how many times one sees an opening in the fair one's harness), a woman is angry, or cries, or both, and there is no repartee to that ultima ratio.
I maintain, then, that CECILIA was pretty, and very pretty; pleasant, and very pleasant. No doubt she keeps those qualities yet. I do not believe in the syllogism by which a man persuades himself that he was a fool, that he had a lucky escape, that a girl becomes quite another person, and usually very stout and stupid, because she has preferred someone else to himself. No, if we met to-morrow—But Fortune forbid that we should meet to-morrow, or any other day! I have no relics of CECILIA. I had some,—an old glove, a lash of a riding-switch, and other trifles. I kept them in the secret drawer of a bureau, and in my absence that bureau was traded away for a new æsthetic article, relics and all, of course. Perhaps some minor poet bought the piece of furniture, and found the things, and wrote a poem on them. That is what makes me uncomfortable. If CECILIA sees the poem in one of the Magazines, and remembers the incidents which the souvenirs recall, she will certainly not be pleased with me, whether she fancies that I wrote the poem, or that I forgot all about the treasures, and traded their receptacle away. Life is really very complicated.