"But then, my dear, I like my tea so very strong," says I; "and you take yours uncommonly mild. I have remarked it at your parties."
"It's a shame that a man should be robbed so," cried Mrs. S.
"How kind it is of you to cry thieves, Flora!" I reply.
"It's my duty, Charles!" exclaims my cousin. "And I should like to know who that great, tall, gawky red-haired girl in the passage is!"
Ah me! the name of the only woman who ever had possession of this heart was not Elizabeth; though I own I did think at one time that my little schemer of a landlady would not have objected if I had proposed to make Miss Prior Mrs. Batchelor. And it is not only the poor and needy who have this mania, but the rich, too. In the very highest circles, as I am informed by the best authorities, this match-making goes on. Ah woman—woman!—ah wedded wife!—ah fond mother of fair daughters! how strange thy passion is to add to thy titles that of mother-in-law! I am told, when you have got the title, it is often but a bitterness and a disappointment. Very likely the son-in-law is rude to you, the coarse, ungrateful brute! and very possibly the daughter rebels, the thankless serpent! And yet you will go on scheming: and having met only with disappointment from Louisa and her husband, you will try and get one for Jemima, and Maria, and down even to little Toddles coming out of the nursery in her red shoes! When you see her with little Tommy, your neighbour's child, fighting over the same Noah's ark, or clambering on the same rocking-horse, I make no doubt, in your fond silly head, you are thinking, "Will those little people meet some twenty years hence?" And you give Tommy a very large piece of cake, and have a fine present for him on the Christmas tree—you know you do, though he is but a rude, noisy child, and has already beaten Toddles, and taken her doll away from her, and made her cry. I remember, when I myself was suffering from the conduct of a young woman in—in a capital which is distinguished by a viceregal court—and from her heartlessness, as well as that of her relative, who I once thought would be my mother-in-law—shrieking out to a friend who happened to be spouting some lines from Tennyson's Ulysses:—"By George! Warrington, I have no doubt that when the young syrens set their green caps at the old Greek captain and his crew, waving and beckoning him with their white arms and glancing smiles, and wheedling him with their sweetest pipes—I make no doubt, sir, that the mother syrens were behind the rocks (with their dyed fronts and cheeks painted, so as to resist water), and calling out—'Now, Halcyone, my child, that air from the Pirata! Now, Glaukopis, dear, look well at that old gentleman at the helm! Bathykolpos, love, there's a young sailor on the maintop, who will tumble right down into your lap if you beckon him!' And so on—and so on." And I laughed a wild shriek of despair. For I, too, have been on the dangerous island, and come away thence, mad, furious, wanting a strait-waistcoat.
And so, when a white-armed syren, named Glorvina, was bedevilling me with her all too tempting ogling and singing, I did not see at the time, but now I know, that her artful mother was egging that artful child on.
