"Talk her into reason," said he, putting me
into his mother's arms. "I want her to marry
me, and she says she won't."

I did my test to keep sulky for a proper
length of time, but it was the hardest thing I
tried to do, and they both so kind, and the
place so bright and cozy, and I being so happy
on the sly all the time! So the end of it was
that I did not go to America, and that I am Mrs.
McDonnell of the Buckey Farm. But I never
tried match-making again.

   A PROPHET WITHOUT HONOUR *
* See A SERPENT IN ARCADIA, vol. xiv., p. 33.

                 CHAPTER I.

SINCE the cruel hour when our prospects in
Arcadia (sweetly poetic was the term you
entitled to the Emporium) was expatriated by the
aid of yonder serpent in whose guile the
hypocrasy of the crocodile is included, my life has
been pregnant of momentious traits and trials,
how little dreamed, when, light as thistle-down,
my hat was on my head, and the lord of my
bosom rode buoyant on his throne!

What was darkly hinted, during my last
literary protrusion, assumed a collossial guise
shortly subsequent to them sad Arcadian
occurrences. What with our first-born, and the
earthquake which disseminated our bonnets to the
wind, the temper of Mrs. Wignett, sedulously
cloaked in honeyed garb, during the delusive
hours when we kept maiden company, assumed
its native imperative hue. Further, an aggravationtion
of our felicity occurred, such, I sustain, is
awarded to few;—-an inmate, unforeseen, untold,
and (without impolite violation) intolerable.
Incaution had forborne to make me primarily
acquainted with an extant sister to my life's partner;
and little had I weened of such an apparation as
the hydra in feminine frame who rose as if from
ocean on the domestic hearth, the atmosphere
of which was implacid enough ere Mrs. Molesey
injected discords to the troubled waters. But
such females, when out of place, is addicted to
pouncing on their family ties at the precise
junction when the storms of fortune darken on
the orison. And so it was.

Though given out from herself she was a
widow (as reverse to our proposition in the
Emporium), the defunct Mr. Molesey was
nothing above a mere vapour, whose profession
no one had ever fathomed. No mortal eye had
witnessed his exterior. Come what come may,
whether fact or fiction—-widow, or what is less
precise—-she had reached that goal when
feminine expectations of double life to come must
recede even in the most strenuous candidate,
thus representing herself as commanding a
competency amassed under protracted service in
aristocratic situations, sisterly favour and
gratification was bespoke in her predeliction to form
art and part in our family. "Your boy, Mary,"
said she, "shall reap from his aunt." A wilder
and more pregnant invention distorts not the
noble annals of even your fictions, sir.

Facts being these—-though far be it from me
to asseverate her being unequal to the mask, as
a cook of second water—-but her evil passions
had driven her from post to pillar. Whether
limited was the family, or her duties born out by
two kitchen-maids and a confectioner (such as
the Marquis of Bantry's establishment), agree
and exist concordantly with her species she
could not, however patient was them upper or
under her. I have since heard say that at Sir
James Powderoy's she extinguished herself
above the ordinary of her flights by shying
empty soda-waters at the butler, carried out by
the employment of a dialogue, which I do not
apologise for suppression of it. Enough:
though. I could heap kindred anecdotes by the
myriad. The bottles pourtrays Mrs. Molesey
(not at her worst) to an iota; and she did not
falsify them, during the epoch of her sojourn,
whereby my tranquil peace was left without
redress.

Her footing was easy made good with one of
us. She had but to lay the breaking up of the
bonnets on our domestic threshold, and my
conjugal partner hailed her with blank credentials as
an oracle might be adopted with. To put me down
became the ]oint tuam and meam of both their
lives, as if it had been a page from the Whole Duty
of Man. I mused, hoping the epidemic would
blow over, and reluctious to credit that the
grounds of Mrs. Wignett's partiality to me,
which had excited matrimony, could, so soon
like the hollow, prejudicious volcano, crumble
beneath the airy tread of trusting credulity.
Alas! hope is brittle company, as the song
says.

Step by step, misgivings conglomerated.
Firstly, Mrs. Molesey's money : it was locked
up for the moment (Sir James Powderoy having
instanced her to its disposition) in a Tubulous
Bridge at Tobago. Dividends was to ensue
another year; calls no more to come. The bridge
was all of a piece with that Mr. Molesey, as was
not to be found on this visual earth. Her dresses,
again, was few and dubious of quality, and Mrs.
Wignett's things was in universal request, else
Mrs. Molesey could not have demeaned herself to
frequent church (such being her regularity)
otherwise as apparelled. Did my wife protest,
when her satin cloak was called on (relict of
Lady Maria), our mouths was stopped by our
boy, and the harvest to be gleaned from the
Tubulous Bridge of Tobago.

And my mouth in particular was stopped,
whenever our boy opened his to scream, which
was eternally night and day. You will own,
sir, that a welcome little stranger is a domestical
novelty more anxious than agreeable for a
male parent to cope with under the
calmest circumstances. Ours did scream, I
repeat, superior to the top of any baby's bent
ever seen or heard tell of, and spent as I was
with hushing it to and fro, on my feet, the livelong
night, "Mary," says I, "due of two
conjuntures is this. Either Emporius" (such his
allusive name) "will fracture a blood-vessel, if
illness it be, or if wilful, a tap might initiate