Having polisht off this epistol, master intrustid it to me to carry, and bade me at the same time to try and give it into Miss Griffin's hand alone. I ran with it to Lady Griffinses. I found Miss, as I desired, in a sollatary condition; and I presented her with master's pafewmed Billy.
She read it, and the number of size to which she gave vint, and the tears which she shed, beggar digscription. She wep and sighed until I thought she would bust. She even claspt my hand in her's, and said, “O Charles! is he very, very miserable?”
“He is, ma'am,” says I; “very miserable indeed—nobody, upon my honor, could be miserablerer.”
On hearing this pethetic remark, her mind was made up at onst: and sitting down to her eskrewtaw, she immediantly ableaged master with an answer. Here it is in black and white:
“My prisoned bird shall pine no more, but fly home to its nest in these arms! Adored Algernon, I will meet thee to-morrow, at the same place, at the same hour. Then, then, it will be impossible for aught but death to divide us.
“M. G.”
This kind of flumry style comes, you see, of reading novvles, and cultivating littery purshuits in a small way. How much better is it to be puffickly ignorant of the hart of writing, and to trust to the writing of the heart. This is MY style: artyfiz I despise, and trust compleatly to natur: but revnong a no mootong, as our continential friends remark: to that nice white sheep, Algernon Percy Deuceace, Exquire; that wenrabble old ram, my Lord Crabs his father; and that tender and dellygit young lamb, Miss Matilda Griffin.
She had just foalded up into its proper triangular shape the noat transcribed abuff, and I was just on the point of saying, according to my master's orders, “Miss, if you please, the Honrabble Mr. Deuceace would be very much ableaged to you to keep the seminary which is to take place to-morrow a profound se—,” when my master's father entered, and I fell back to the door. Miss, without a word, rusht into his arms, burst into teers agin, as was her reglar way (it must be confest she was of a very mist constitution), and showing to him his son's note, cried, “Look, my dear lord, how nobly your Algernon, OUR Algernon, writes to me. Who can doubt, after this, of the purity of his matchless affection?”
My lord took the letter, read it, seamed a good deal amyoused, and returning it to its owner, said, very much to my surprise, “My dear Miss Griffin, he certainly does seem in earnest; and if you choose to make this match without the consent of your mother-in-law, you know the consequence, and are of course your own mistress.”
“Consequences!—for shame, my lord! A little money, more or less, what matters it to two hearts like ours?”