Can any one call me mercenary after that? Though Miss Crutty had twelve thousand, and Mary only ten (five in hand, and five in the bush), I stuck faithfully to Mary. As a matter of course, Miss Crutty hated Miss Waters. The fact was, Mary had all the country dangling after her, and not a soul would come to Magdalen, for all her £12,000. I used to be attentive to her, though (as it's always useful to be); and Mary would sometimes laugh and sometimes cry at my flirting with Magdalen. This I thought proper very quickly to check. "Mary," said I, "you know that my love for you is disinterested,—for I am faithful to you, though Miss Crutty is richer than you. Don't fly into a rage, then, because I pay her attentions, when you know that my heart and my promise are engaged to you."
The fact is, to tell a little bit of a secret, there is nothing like the having two strings to your bow. "Who knows?" thought I, "Mary may die; and then where are my £10,000?" So I used to be very kind indeed to Miss Crutty; and well it was that I was so: for when I was twenty, and Mary eighteen, I'm blest if news did not arrive that Captain Waters, who was coming home to England with all his money in rupees, had been taken— ship, rupees, self and all—by a French privateer; and Mary, instead of £10,000, had only £5000, making a difference of no less than £350 per annum betwixt her and Miss Crutty.
I had just joined my regiment (the famous North Bungay Fencibles, Colonel Craw commanding) when this news reached me; and you may fancy how a young man, in an expensive regiment and mess, having uniforms and whatnot to pay for, and a figure to cut in the world, felt at hearing such news! "My dearest Robert," wrote Miss Waters, "will deplore my dear brother's loss: but not, I am sure, the money which that kind and generous soul had promised me. I have still five thousand pounds, and with this and your own little fortune (I had £1000 in the five per cents.!) we shall be as happy and contented as possible."
Happy and contented, indeed! Didn't I know how my father got on with his £300 a-year, and how it was all he could do out of it to add a hundred a-year to my narrow income, and live himself! My mind was made up—I instantly mounted the coach, and flew to our village,—to Mr. Crutty's, of course. It was next door to Doctor Bates's; but I had no business _there_.