The Argosy — page 318: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Between Two Stools. 301 gave us the slip at dessert, and have hardly spoken a word since. If that is the result of passing an evening with one’s lady-love, courtship must be an uncommonly uphill game. Isn’t Miss Barkis willing ? ” ‘*T wasn’t thinking about her,” replied Lascelles, ‘‘but about what happened before you came upstairs. I had to undergo a regular cross-examination concerning the state of my finances and my pro- spects at the bar, and I will say that for our amiable hostess, Ballan- tine couldn’t have done it better. She turned me inside out like a glove.” ‘Put you through your paces, eh?” said Sharpset. ‘‘ Exactly, and the worst of it was, I fancied that Alice enjoyed my embarrassment, though she tried hard to prevent my seeing it. Altogether, I felt extremely uncomfortable.” ‘ Like our friend the Major at dinner,” remarked his companion, chuckling at the recollection. ‘‘I think I managed to put a spoke in his wheel to-night. He won’t find it a walk over, Pll answer for that.” ‘‘'Then you really intend going in for the widow ?” ‘Most decidedly. It’s a safer spec than Brother to Merrylegs.”’ ‘*T don’t know about that,” said the barrister doubtfully. ‘‘ From what I have seen of her this evening, if I had the choice, I would rather depend on the horse !” The Honourable Adolphus was not a man to let the grass grow under his feet ; whatever he made up his mind to do, he did quickly and thoroughly, or, according to his own particular phraseology, “came with arush.” This natural impulse to take time by the fore- lock was strengthened in the present instance by two additional incentives to exertion, namely, the desire to cut out de Mogyns, and, what was still more important under the circumstances, the deplorable condition of his finances. It now only wanted a week to the race, and if by that period he had not succeeded in one or the other of his projects, he was, as he himself expressed it, a ‘‘ gone coon.” Determined, therefore, to prosecute the siege with vigour, he rarely let an afternoon go by without a pilgrimage to Wimpole Street, but at whatever hour he happened to arrive, he invariably found the Major there before him; and though on every occasion he prolonged his visit to an unconscionable length, never by any chance was he even for a moment alone with the widow. ‘The conversation being thus limited to generalities, neither party had an opportunity of ascertaining who held the first place in the lady’s good graces ; and as she care- fully abstained from showing the slightest preference for either, and accepted their complimentary tributes to her looks and dress as a mere matter of course, they can hardly be said to have gained much by their chivalrous devotion. This unpromising state of things continued until the day preceding that on which the handicap was to be decided, when Frank, who had COMIC OOO “S (SO) im