"

"A cruel waste! You should be a centipede, Hal, instead of that forlorn
biped, a bachelor. By the way, speaking of single-blessedness, how it must
harrow you, my boy, to witness diurnally the bliss of the bride and
bridegroom who sit opposite you here at table! Favor them with Lamb's
'Complaint against Married People,' will you? and send me the bill."

"Bride and bridegroom? Well, that _is_ rich! Have a cigar, deluded youth,
while I enlighten you concerning this mellifluous couple. Did you mark the
gentleman particularly? You can't take him in at a glance: there's too
much of him. Goodwin his name is--Timothy Goodwin: 'Good Timothy' his
friends dub him; and the title applies.

"He sat next me at table when I first came to Mrs. Tewksbury's, five years
ago, and from the outset he showed a fatherly interest in me--an interest
which this quaking stripling of an organist appreciated, I can assure you.
Being one of the pillars of St. Luke's--the church I play at, you
remember--and an esteemed musical critic withal, his hearty approval of
me as a performer was an immense advantage to me.

"You'd hardly suppose such a quiet, imperturbable earthling as he looks to
be would rhapsodize over music, would you? It was a surprise to me to find
how deeply it moved him. He soon fell into the habit of dropping into my
room after tea when he heard me at the piano; and many a time I've caught
the great, strong fellow mopping his eyes surreptitiously over affecting
passages.

"As I came to know him intimately, and to feel what a staunch,
tender-hearted, domestic sort of individual he was, I began to wonder he
had never married. One day I asked him in a joking way how a rich man like
himself could reconcile it with his conscience to remain a bachelor in
America, where there was such a preponderance of unmarried ladies to be
supported? He made a wry face, and said he had assumed the maintenance of
two spinster step-cousins: wasn't that his part?

"'Or if you think it isn't, Hal, I'll tell you what I'll do,' he added,
laughing. 'You marry yourself, and I'll support your wife. Won't that be
fair?'

"'Hardly fair for the lady,' I remarked, adding that I should pity the
luckless unknown who should thus fail to secure him as her Benedict.

"The idea seemed to amuse him immensely.

"'You kindly insinuate that it would be a benevolence in me to take a
wife,' said he with a twinkle in his eye. 'Now, I protest I'm not
conceited enough to