“There's for you, my lad!” says he; “Mr. Green has done for you both cleverly.”
“Upon my soul,” I cried, raising up in bed, “he should be put in the gatehouse for his impudence! My Lord,—”
“Don't 'My Lord' me,” says Comyn; “plain 'Jack' will do.”
There was no resisting such a man: and I said as much. And took his hand and called him 'Jack,' the doctor posing before the mirror the while, stroking his rues. “Out upon you both,” says he, “for a brace of sentimental fools!”
“Richard,” said Comyn, presently, with a roguish glance at the doctor, “there were some reason in our fighting had it been over a favour of Miss Manners. Eh? Come, doctor,” he cried, “you will break your neck looking for the reflection of wrinkles. Come, now, we must have little Finery's letter. I give you my word Chartersea is as ugly as all three heads of Cerberus, and as foul as a ship's barrel of grease. I tell you Miss Dorothy would sooner marry you.”
“And she might do worse, my Lord,” the doctor flung back, with a strut.
“Ay, and better. But I promise you Richard and I are not such fools as to think she will marry his Grace. We must have the little coxcomb's letter.”
“Well, have it you must, I suppose,” returns the doctor. And with that he draws it from his pocket, where he has it buttoned in. Then he took a pinch of Holland and began.
The first two pages had to deal with Miss Dorothy's triumph, to which her father made full justice. Mr. Manners world have the doctor (and all the province) to know that peers of the realm, soldiers, and statesmen were at her feet. Orders were as plentiful in his drawing-room as the candles. And he had taken a house in Arlington Street, where Horry Walpole lived when not at Strawberry, and their entrance was crowded night and day with the footmen and chairmen of the grand monde. Lord Comyn broke in more than once upon the reading, crying,—“Hear, hear!” and,—“My word, Mr. Manners has not perjured himself thus far. He has not done her justice by half.” And I smiled at the thought that I had aspired to such a beauty!
“'Entre noes, mon cher Courtenay,' Mr. Manners writes, 'entre noes, our Dorothy hath had many offers of great advantage since she hath been here. And but yesterday comes a chariot with a ducal coronet to our door. His Grace of Chartersea, if you please, to request a private talk with me. And I rode with him straightway to his house in Hanover Square.'”