Excerpt
MAN AND WIVES.
A TRAVESTY.
By MOSE SKINNER.
CHAPTER SECOND.
LOVE.
The Hon. MICHAEL LADLE and ARCHIBALD BLINKSOP were interrupted in their conversation by BELINDA, who sent off the former under pretence that the croquet players were waiting for him, or, as she expressed it, it was "his turn to mallet."
As soon as he was fairly out of sight, she turned to ARCHIBALD, and said; "Come with me."
"What for?" said ARCHIBALD, as she seized him by the arm and hurried him into the shrubbery. "Recollect," he added, "that I am an orphan, with a constitution never robust."
She made no reply till they were screened from observation.
"You needn't be afraid, you little fool," she said. "Sit down on that stump."
ARCHIBALD tremblingly obeyed her.
She imprisoned his fluttering hand in hers, and smoothed his hair reassuringly.
"ARCHIE," she murmured; "dear ARCHIE."
"Oh, don't, don't talk that way," said ARCHIBALD. "You make me afraid of you."
"Afraid!" she returned. "And of me? Oh cruel, cruel ARCHIBALD. Is it for this that I have passed many a sleepless night, awaking unrefreshed with haggard orbs? Is it for this that I've pined away and refused meat victuals?"
She paused. Her heart was beating violently. She took from her pocket a copy of the Ledger, adjusted her eye-glasses, and continued:
"ARCHIBALD BLINKSOP, for weeks I have basked in the sunlight of your existence. Your celestial smile, shedding a tranquil calm o'er my perturbed spirit, has been my daily sustenance. Your ethereal form, beautiful as an houri, has, with its subtle fascination, enthralled and steeped in bliss my innermost soul, lifting me as it were into a purer, a holier existence. Your—"
"Oh-h," moaned the wretched ARCHIBALD, "please stop. That's COBB, Jr. I know it is. When I was sea-sick on the canal, they read a chapter to me just like that, instead of giving me an emetic, and I was out of my head all next day."
"But you do love me, don't you, ARCHIBALD?—just a very small fragment, you know."
She seized him by the ear and kissed him twice.
"Come, own up now," said she, "that from the first moment you saw me, you have felt a sort of a spooney hankering, and a general looseness, including a desire to write poetry and use hair-oil, and wear pretty neckties; a sort of a feeling that your clothes don't fit you, and you can't bear the sight of gravy, and dote on lavender kids, and want to part your hair in the middle. That's being in love, ARCHIE. That's—"
At this juncture voices were heard calling for ARCHIBALD.
"Oh, do, do let me go," he pleaded.
BELINDA grasped him firmly by the collar. "Heaven knows," said she impressively, "that I have wooed you thus far in a spirit of the most delicate consideration. Now, I mean business, I want a husband, and by the Sixteenth Amendment, you don't stir from this spot, until you promise to marry me!"
"But—but—I don't want to get married," said ARCHIBALD; "I—I—ain't old enough."
She glared at him menacingly.
"Am I to understand then," she shrieked, "that you dare refuse me?" And she laughed hysterically....