(I
may here remark, that the Mistress is a widow in her fourth year. The
Master was possessed of one of those unfortunate constitutions in which
Spirits turns to Water, and rises in the ill-starred Victim.)
My speculating it over, not then only, but repeatedly, sometimes with the
Mistress, sometimes with one, sometimes with another, led up to the
Mistress's saying to me,--whether at first in joke or in earnest, or half
joke and half earnest, it matters not:
"Christopher, I am going to make you a handsome offer."
(If this should meet her eye,--a lovely blue,--may she not take it ill my
mentioning that if I had been eight or ten year younger, I would have
done as much by her! That is, I would have made her a offer. It is for
others than me to denominate it a handsome one.)
"Christopher, I am going to make you a handsome offer."
"Put a name to it, ma'am."
"Look here, Christopher. Run over the articles of Somebody's Luggage.
You've got it all by heart, I know."
"A black portmanteau, ma'am, a black bag, a desk, a dressing-case, a
brown-paper parcel, a hat-box, and an umbrella strapped to a
walking-stick."
"All just as they were left. Nothing opened, nothing tampered with."
"You are right, ma'am. All locked but the brown-paper parcel, and that
sealed."
The Mistress was leaning on Miss Martin's desk at the bar-window, and she
taps the open book that lays upon the desk,--she has a pretty-made hand
to be sure,--and bobs her head over it and laughs.
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