, altogether unworthy to be
regarded as a gentleman. He knew himself to be Mr. Prosper of Buston
Hall, with centuries of Prospers for his ancestors; whereas Soames was
the son of a tax-gatherer, and Simpson had come down from London as a
clerk from a solicitor's office in the City. And yet it was true that
people would talk of him as did Miss Thoroughbung! His cruelty would be
in every lady's mouth. And then his stinginess about the ponies would be
the gossip of the county for twelve months. And, as he found out what
Miss Thoroughbung was, the disgrace of even having wished to marry her
loomed terribly large before him.

But there was a twinkle of jest in the lady's eyes all the while which
he did not perceive, and which, had he perceived it, he could not have
understood. Her anger was but simulated wrath. She, too, had thought
that it might be well, under circumstances, if she were to marry Mr.
Prosper, but had quite understood that those circumstances might not be
forthcoming. "I don't think it will do at all, my dear," she had said to
Miss Tickle. "Of course an old bachelor like that won't want to have
you."

"I beg you won't think of me for a moment," Miss Tickle had answered,
with solemnity.

"Bother! why can't you tell the truth? I'm not going to throw you over,
and of course you'd be just nowhere if I did. I shan't break my heart
for Mr. Prosper. I know I should be an old fool if I were to marry him;
and he is more of an old fool for wanting to marry me. But I did think
he wouldn't cut up so rough about the ponies." And then, when no answer
came to the last letter from Soames & Simpson, and the tidings reached
her, round from the brewery, that Mr. Prosper intended to be off, she
was not in the least surprised. But the information, she thought, had
come to her in an unworthy manner. So she determined to punish the
gentleman, and went out to Buston Hall and called him Peter Prosper. We
may doubt, however, whether she had ever realized how terribly her
scourges would wale him.

"And to think that you would let it come round to me in that way,
through the young people,--writing about it just as a joke!"

"I never wrote about it like a joke," said Mr. Prosper, almost crying.

"I remember now. It was to your nephew; and of course everybody at the
rectory saw it. Of course they were all laughing at you." There was one
thing now written in the book of fate, and sealed as certainly as the
crack of doom: no shilling