oing into
the hock and Seltzer to keep up his spirits. "You see, she's afraid, her
governor's mind being so set on old Mount Trefoil and his baron's
coronet; they might offer some opposition, put it off till she was
one-and-twenty, you know--and she's so distractedly fond of me, poor
little thing, that she'd die under the probation, probably--and I'm sure
I couldn't keep faithful to her for two mortal years. Besides, there's
something amusing in eloping; the excitement of it keeps up one's
spirits; whereas, if I were marched to church with so many mourners--I
mean groomsmen--I should feel I was rehearsing my own obsequies like
Charles V., and should funk it, ten to one I should. No! I like eloping:
it gives the certain flavor of forbidden fruit, which many things,
besides pure water, want to 'give them a relish.'"

"Let's see how's the thing to be managed?" asked Gower. "Beyond telling
me I was to go with you, consigned ignominiously to the rumble, to
witness the ceremony, I'm not very clear as to the programme."

"Why, as soon as it's dawn," responded Belle, with leisurely whiffs of
his meerschaum, "I'm to take the carriage up to the gate at Fern
Wood--this is what she tells me in her last note; she was coming to meet
me, but just as she was dressed her mother took her to call on some
people, and she had to resort to the old hollow tree. The deuce is in
it, I think, to prevent our meeting; if it weren't for the letters and
her maid, we should have been horribly put to it for communication;--I'm
to take the carriage, as I say, and drive up there, where she and her
maid will be waiting. We drive away, of course, catch the 8.15 train,
and cut off to town, and get married at the Regeneration, Piccadilly,
where a fellow I know very well will act the priestly Calcraft. The
thing that bothers me most of all is getting up so early. I used to hate
it so awfully when I was a young one at the college. I like to have my
bath, and my coffee, and my paper leisurely, and saunter through my
dressing, and get up when the day's _warmed_ for me. Early parade's one
of the crying cruelties of the service; I always turn in again after it,
and regard it as a hideous nightmare. I vow I couldn't give a greater
test of my devotion than by getting up at six o'clock to go after
her--deuced horrible exertion! I'm quite certain that my linen won't be
aired, nor my coffee fit to drink, nor Perkins with his eyes half open,
nor a quarter of his wits