LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2087, 1 November 1880, Page 3

LITERATURE.

HOW SNOOKS GOT OUT OF IT. (Concluded.) "It'a extremely good of you, I'm sure,' aid the youngest Miss Brawn rig calmly. ' But, uncivil as I fear it must sound, I don't want to marry you.' * Don't you, by Jove!' said Snooks, hastily. ' Well, that's awfully ki No, no!' pulling himself up with a start; 'I don't mean that, you know; I mean it's awfully horrid, you know. In fact,' warming up to his work through sheer gratitude, ' you have made ma miserable for ever; you've broken my heart ' ' Dear me, how shocking!' said Miss Lily frivolously. * Let us hope Time will mend it. I'm not very sure you did not speak the truth at first. I really believe it is kind, my refusing you. And now, Mr Snooks, if I were yuu, I should go in and say good night to mamma, becwifee have been having a good deal of papa's champagne, and it is trying to the constitution.'

Snooks took the hint, bade farewell to Mrs Brownrig, who, to his heated imagination, appeared to regard him al< eadv with a moist and motherly eye, and taking Wilding's arm, drew him out of the house.

' Well ? ■ said the lattar interrogatively. • I don't know whether it is well or ill,' returned he gloomi'y ' But I followed your advice, and proposed to 'em all.' • And they accepted you ?' ' The most of 'em. But Lily, the youngest, she '

' I always said she was a sensible girl,' put in Mr Wilding, aotto voce. ' Did you ?' with much surprise. ' Well, she refused me; sort of said she wculd'nt have me at any price. So you see you were wrong!' ' I always knew she was one of the most intelligent girls I ever met,' Mr Wilding repeated, in a tone so difficult that his companion for once had sufficient sense to refrain from demanding an exp'acation. The next morning, as Katie Brownrig turned the angle of the hall that led to her father's sanctum (whither a ssnse of filial duty beckoned her) she almost ran into the arms of her three sisters, all converging toward the same spot from different directions. Simultaneously they entered Mr Brownrig'a study. (He called it a library; but that word is too of ten profaned for me to prof »ne it, so I shall draw the line at study.) Bat to return. Miss Lilly, being the youngest, was, of course, the first to raise her voice.

' I had a proposal last night, papa, and I have come to tell yon abont it/ said she, in a]tone replete -with triumph. It is so sweet in the mind of youth to outdo its elders. Bat, 'on this occasion only,' the elders refused to be outdone. They each and all betrayed a smile of inward satisfaction, and then they gave way to speech. ' No!' they said in a breath. They did not mean to doubt or to be impolite; they only meant surprise. * The curate,' said Betty, in a composed but plainly contemptuous whisper. It was a stage whisper. 'Old Majjr Sterne,' said Miss Georgie promptly. 'Perhaps Henry Simma,' suggested Katie, with some sympathy. Then turning to her father she said, with a conscious blush, 'lt iB very strange, papa,' but I too had a proposal last night.' ' And so had I!' exclaimed Georgie and Hetty in a breath. 'Eh?' said papa, pushing up his spectacles. He was fat and pudgy, with sandy hair and a flabby nose. He was a powerful man, too, and one unpleasant to come to open quarrel with. Proposals in the Brownrig family were few and far between—in fact, curiosities—and so much luck as the girls described falling into one day overpowered him. ' One at a time ; my breath is not what it used to be,' he said, addressing Katie. (If he said breadtb, it would have been equally true, as his mother—if she was to ba believed—always declared he was a lean baby.) • May I ask the name of your lover ?'

'Mr Snooks.' said she with downcast eyes and. a timid smile She took up the corner of a cherry-colored bow that adorned her gown, and fell to admiring it, through what she fondly thought was bashfulness. • Impossible!' exclaimed Georgie angrily. ' What a disgraceful untruth !' cried Hetty rudely. 'Mr Snooks proposed to me last night, and I accepted him.' ' What is it you say ? Oh, I am going out of my mind; my senses are deserting me,' said Georgie, putting her hands to her head with a dramatic gesture. 'Or is it a dream that he has asked me to marry him, and that I too said " yes ?" ' • I seldom visit the elouds,' said Lily, with a short bitter laugh. ' And I certainly know he made me a noble offer of his hand and heart; both which treasures I declined.' ' Where V demanded the other three, as though with one mouth. ' In the Laurel avenue. !' At this they all groaned alond. ' Perfidious monster!' said Hetty from her heart.

• Am I to understand,' began Mr Brownrig, with suppressed but evilent fury, ' that this—this—unmitigated scoundrel asked you all to marry him last night ?' •If we speak the truth, yea,' replied the girls dismally. 'He was drunk,' said papa savagely. ' I can't believe It,' said Katie, who was dissolved in tears—in fact, 'likeNiobe, all tears'—by this time. '.Nothing could be nicer than the way he did it. His language was perfect, and so thoroughly from the—he» t' 'He addressed me in a most honorable, upright and Christian fashion,' said Hetty. ' I am sure he meant every word he ssid.' She was thinking uneasily of that kiss in the moonlight. Could any one have seen her ? Was old Major Sterne any whereabout at the moment ?

' I certainly considered his manner strange, not a bit like what one reads, said Georgie honestly, ' but I thought of the title and the property, and said yes directly.' • I thought him the very greatest muff I ever spoke to,' broke in Miss Lily with decision. ' I refused him without a moment's hesitation, ?and toldjhimto go home. I'm sure it was well I did. I dare say if he had stayed here much longer, he would have proposed to mamma next, and afterwards to the upper housemaid. I agree with you, papa, the champagne was too much for him.' «I—I think he is fond of me,' said Katie, In a low and trembling tone. Her fingeis are not playing with the cherry coloured bow now, but her eyelids have borrowed largely of its tint. ' Don't be a gooeo, Katie/ said the youngest Miss Brownrig, kindly but scornfully ; ' you don't suppose any of us would marry him now, after the way he has behaved. Do have some little pride.' 'Perhaps he is mad,' said Hetty vaguely. Just at this moment, as a salve to her wounded vanity, she would have been glad to believe him so.

'No, my dear,' returned Lilly, calmly; • he has no brains worth turning.'

'He said something, papa, about calling to-day at four o'clock,' said Katie, very faintly. ~* Then I shall sit here till four,' returned Mr Browring in an awful tone. ' I shall sit here until five ; and then I shall get up, and go out, and find that young man, and give him snoh a horse-whipping as I warrant you he never got before in all his life ' 'Don't be too hard on him, papa,' entreated Katie, weakly. 'I shan't, my dear, but my whip will,' said papa, grimly. So he waitad until five ; he waited till half-pant five; and then he took up a certain heavy gold-knobbed whip that lay stretched on the table as though in readine?s, and sallied forth in search of Snooks' room. And he found them, and Snooks too—in bed, suffering from a severe catarrh, caught, I presume, in the laurel avenue. And no man knows what he did to Pnoriks But, at least, he gave him an increased desire for his bed, because for a fortnight afterward he never stirred out.

When Mr Wilding heard all this. I regret to say he gave way to noisy mirth in the privacy of his chambers ; and was actually caught by his washerwoman —who peeped through the key-hole—performing a wild dance in the middle of the floor.