"Humph!" grunted the uncle, "a pretty fellow for a banker!"
Debtors grew pressing to Mr. Ferdinand Fitzroy, and Mr. Ferdinand Fitzroy grew pressing to Miss Helen Convolvulus. "It is a dangerous thing," said she, timidly, "to marry a man so admired,—will you always be faithful?"
"By heaven!" cried the lover.
"Heigho!" sighed Miss Helen Convolvulus, and Lord Rufus Pumilion entering, the conversation was changed.
But the day of the marriage was fixed; and Mr. Ferdinand Fitzroy bought a new curricle. By Apollo, how handsome he looked in it! A month before the wedding day the uncle died. Miss Helen Convolvulus was quite tender in her condolences—"Cheer up, my Ferdinand," said she, "for your sake, I have discarded Lord Rufus Pumilion!" "Adorable condescension!" cried our hero;—"but Lord Rufus Pumilion is only four feet two, and has hair like a peony."
"All men are not so handsome as Mr. Ferdinand Fitzroy!" was the reply.
Away goes our hero, to be present at the opening of his uncle's will.
"I leave," said the testator (who I have before said was a bit of a satirist,) "my share of the bank, and the whole or my fortune, legacies excepted, to"—(here Mr. Ferdinand Fitzroy wiped his beautiful eyes with a cambric handkerchief, exquisitely brode) "my natural son, John Spriggs, an industrious, pains-taking youth, who will do credit to the bank. I did once intend to have made my nephew Ferdinand my heir; but so curling a head can have no talent for accounts. I want my successor to be a man of business, not beauty; and Mr. Ferdinand Fitzroy is a great deal too handsome for a banker; his good looks will, no doubt, win him any heiress in town. Meanwhile, I leave him, to buy a dressing-case, a thousand pounds."
"A thousand devils!" said Mr. Ferdinand Fitzroy, banging out of the room. He flew to his mistress. She was not at home. "Lies," says the Italian proverb, "have short legs;" but truths, if they are unpleasant, have terrible long ones! The next day Mr. Ferdinand Fitzroy received a most obliging note of dismissal.
"I wish you every happiness," said Miss Helen Convolvulus, in conclusion—"but my friends are right; you are much too handsome for a husband!"