, I
can tell you, for hang me if I can make head or tail of it! Here have I
been for the last three hours trying to write an offer to your sister,
and actually have not contrived to make a fair start of it yet. I wish
you would lend me a hand, there's a good fellow--I know you are up to
all the right dodges--just give one a sort of notion, eh? don't you
see?"

"What! write an offer to my own sister? Well, of all the quaint ideas I
ever heard, that's the oddest--really you must excuse me."

~~361~~ "Very odd, is it?" inquired Coleman, opening the door in time to
overhear the last sentence. "Pray let me hear about it, then, for I like
to know of odd things particularly; but, perhaps, I'm intruding?"

"Eh? no; come along here, Coleman," cried Lawless, "you are just the
very boy I want--I am going to be married--that is, I want to be, don't
you see, if she'll have me, but there's the rub; Frank Fairlegh is all
right, and the old lady says she's agreeable, so everything depends on
the young woman herself--if she will but say 'Yes,' we shall go ahead in
style; but, unfortunately before she is likely to say anything one way
or the other, you understand, I've got to pop the question, as they call
it. Now, I've about as much notion of making an offer as a cow has of
dancing a hornpipe--so I want you to help us a bit--eh?"

"Certainly," replied Freddy courteously; "I shall be only too happy, and
as delays are dangerous I had perhaps better be off at once--where is
the young lady?"

"Eh! hold hard there! don't go quite so fast, young man," exclaimed
Lawless aghast; "if you bolt away at that pace you'll never see the end
of the run; why, you don't suppose I want you to go and talk to her--pop
the question viva voce, do you? You'll be advising me to be married
by deputy, I suppose, next. No, no, I'm going to do the trick by
letter--something like a Valentine, only rather more so, eh? but I can't
exactly manage to write it properly. If it was but a warranty for a
horse, now, I'd knock it off in no time, but this is a sort of thing,
you see, I'm not used to; one doesn't get married as easily as one
sells a horse, nor as often, eh? and it's rather a nervous piece of
business--a good deal depends upon the letter."

"You've been trying your hand at it already, I see," observed Coleman,
seating himself at the table; "pretty consumption of paper! I wonder
what my governor would say to me if I were to set about drawing a deed
in this