"
"Will you come soon, and be my wife?"
I had been turning over in my head all the evening
how prettily I could lead up to it, and how neatly I
could say it--and behold the melancholy result! Well,
perhaps the feeling of my heart managed to make itself
clear even through those bald words. There was but one
to judge, and she was of that opinion.
I was so lost in my own thoughts that I walked as far
as Oakley Villa with my mother before I opened my mouth.
"Mam," said I at last, "I have proposed to Winnie La
Force, and she has accepted me."
"My boy," said she, "you are a true Packenham." And
so I knew that my mother's approval had reached the point
of enthusiasm. It was not for days--not until I
expressed a preference for dust under the bookcase with
quiet, against purity and ructions--that the dear old
lady perceived traces of the Munros.
The time originally fixed for the wedding was six
months after this; but we gradually whittled it down to
five and to four. My income had risen to about two
hundred and seventy pounds at the time; and Winnie had
agreed, with a somewhat enigmatical smile, that we could
manage very well on that--the more so as marriage sends
a doctor's income up. The reason of her smile became
more apparent when a few weeks before that date I
received a most portentous blue document in which "We,
Brown & Woodhouse, the solicitors for the herein and
hereafter mentioned Winifred La Force, do hereby"--state
a surprising number of things, and use some remarkably
bad English.
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