at one time would have been fatal to
me. It has left me a less ardent lover than I should perhaps
otherwise have been, but it has increased tenfold my power of
appreciating your many charms and my desire that you should become my
wife. Please let me have a few lines of answer by the bearer to let
me know whether or not my suit is accepted. If you accept me I will
at once come and talk the matter over with Mr and Mrs Allaby, whom I
shall hope one day to be allowed to call father and mother.

"I ought to warn you that in the event of your consenting to be my
wife it may be years before our union can be consummated, for I cannot
marry till a college living is offered me. If, therefore, you see fit
to reject me, I shall be grieved rather than surprised.--Ever most
devotedly yours,

"THEOBALD PONTIFEX."

And this was all that his public school and University education had been
able to do for Theobald! Nevertheless for his own part he thought his
letter rather a good one, and congratulated himself in particular upon
his cleverness in inventing the story of a previous attachment, behind
which he intended to shelter himself if Christina should complain of any
lack of fervour in his behaviour to her.

I need not give Christina's answer, which of course was to accept. Much
as Theobald feared old Mr Allaby I do not think he would have wrought up
his courage to the point of actually proposing but for the fact of the
engagement being necessarily a long one, during which a dozen things
might turn up to break it off. However much he may have disapproved of
long engagements for other people, I doubt whether he had any particular
objection to them in his own case. A pair of lovers are like sunset and
sunrise: there are such things every day but we very seldom see them.
Theobald posed as the most ardent lover imaginable, but, to use the
vulgarism for the moment in fashion, it was all "side." Christina was in
love, as indeed she had been twenty times already. But then Christina
was impressionable and could not even hear the name "Missolonghi"
mentioned without bursting into tears. When Theobald accidentally left
his sermon case behind him one Sunday, she slept with it in her bosom and
was forlorn when she had as it were to disgorge it on the following
Sunday; but I do not think Theobald ever took so much as an old
toothbrush of Christina's to bed with him. Why, I knew a young man once