“The dear Archdeacon is getting so absent-minded.
He read a list of box-holders for the opera as the
First Lesson the other Sunday, instead of the families
and lots of the tribes of Israel that entered Canaan.
Fortunately no one noticed the mistake.”
CHAPTER V
On a conveniently secluded bench facing the Northern
Pheasantry in the Zoological Society’s Gardens,
Regent’s Park, Courtenay Youghal sat immersed
in mature flirtation with a lady, who, though certainly
young in fact and appearance, was some four or five
years his senior. When he was a schoolboy of
sixteen, Molly McQuade had personally conducted him
to the Zoo and stood him dinner afterwards at Kettner’s,
and whenever the two of them happened to be in town
on the anniversary of that bygone festivity they religiously
repeated the programme in its entirety. Even
the menu of the dinner was adhered to as nearly as
possible; the original selection of food and wine
that schoolboy exuberance, tempered by schoolboy shyness,
had pitched on those many years ago, confronted Youghal
on those occasions, as a drowning man’s past
life is said to rise up and parade itself in his last
moments of consciousness.
The flirtation which was thus perennially restored
to its old-time footing owed its longevity more to
the enterprising solicitude of Miss McQuade than to
any conscious sentimental effort on the part of Youghal
himself. Molly McQuade was known to her neighbours
in a minor hunting shire as a hard-riding conventionally
unconventional type of young woman, who came naturally
into the classification, “a good sort.”
She was just sufficiently good-looking, sufficiently
reticent about her own illnesses, when she had any,
and sufficiently appreciative of her neighbours’
gardens, children and hunters to be generally popular.
Most men liked her, and the percentage of women who
disliked her was not inconveniently high. One
of these days, it was assumed, she would marry a brewer
or a Master of Otter Hounds, and, after a brief interval,
be known to the world as the mother of a boy or two
at Malvern or some similar seat of learning.
The romantic side of her nature was altogether unguessed
by the countryside.
Her romances were mostly in serial form and suffered
perhaps in fervour from their disconnected course
what they gained in length of days. Her affectionate
interest in the several young men who figured in her
affairs of the heart was perfectly honest, and she
certainly made no attempt either to conceal their separate
existences, or to play them off one against the other.
Neither could it be said that she was a husband hunter;
she had made up her mind what sort of man she was
likely to marry, and her forecast did not differ very
widely from that formed by her local acquaintances.
If her married life were eventually to turn out a failure,
at least she looked forward to it with very moderate
expectations. Her love affairs she put on a
Copyrights
The Unbearable Bassington from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
