It had been a long engagement, commenced by him between the ages of
knickerbocker and tobacco, and encouraged by her as a development of the
Prince Bountiful and Cinderella romances of the schoolroom. A charming
contract, drawn up without sign and seal and cemented after the manner
of barbaric hordes by heterogeneous offerings precious to the engaging
parties, such as guinea-pigs, bird's eggs, looted apples, and, later on,
prizes in vellum, deposited with blushing triumph into the concavity of
a Dolly Varden pinafore. Parents wagged their heads and forbade, but the
veto was conditional; the wisdom of the serpent was allied to a certain
downiness of the dove, for hints at expectations in the future of the
impecunious suitor necessitated an attitude both Janus-faced and
revolving. Their perspicacity was duly rewarded, for later on the
vacuous pockets of the young subaltern--he had gone to thicken the "thin
red line"--became plethoric with inherited revenues of a deceased uncle
on the mother's side, a personage for whom malt had been the Brahma of
idolatry, who had laid up for himself a tidy treasure despite the
corruptions of rust and moth.

No sooner were the legacy dues arranged than Victor Dorrien, in a letter
beautifully ebullient if ungrammatical, demanded permission to import
his chosen one to share a temporary exile in India where, for the nonce,
he was tied by technical obligations. He vowed that celibacy was dull,
and soldiering monotonous; and, moreover, that, without the sweetheart
of his youth to tease and plague him, there would no glint on the
avuncular guineas.

The letter was a hearty one, and went the round of the family circle to
a chorus of satisfied praise. The chorus did it. Someone has said that
"perpetual representation amounts to inculcation," and this phrase ably
describes the uses of chorus. Continued reiteration makes gospel truth.
The family chorus on the subject of matrimony is the mainstay of
parental soloists, its note brings the recalcitrant or frisking lamb to
"mark time," and subsequently dictates the pace of a quick march to the
impending sacrifice. Social excitement is almost as sustaining as
fanatical enthusiasm; it is the intoxicant which inflames half the
actors that strut through the world's dramas of marriage, murder, or
martyrdom. It sustained and inflamed little Elsie, who, dizzy with
congratulations, valedictory gushings, present receiving, dress trying,
and orange-blossom cho