Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by the PUNCHINELLO PUBLISHING COMPANY, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.
The Hon. MICHAEL LADLE and ARCHIBALD BLINKSOP were interrupted in their conversation by BELINDA, who sent off the former under pretence that the croquet players were waiting for him, or, as she expressed it, it was "his turn to mallet."
As soon as he was fairly out of sight, she turned to ARCHIBALD, and said; "Come with me."
"What for?" said ARCHIBALD, as she seized him by the arm and hurried him into the shrubbery. "Recollect," he added, "that I am an orphan, with a constitution never robust."
She made no reply till they were screened from observation.
"You needn't be afraid, you little fool," she said. "Sit down on that stump."
She imprisoned his fluttering hand in hers, and smoothed his hair reassuringly.
"Oh, don't, _don't_ talk that way," said ARCHIBALD. "You make me afraid of you."
"Afraid!" she returned. "And of _me_? Oh cruel, cruel ARCHIBALD. Is it for this that I have passed many a sleepless night, awaking unrefreshed with haggard orbs? Is it for this that I've pined away and refused meat victuals?"
She paused. Her heart was beating violently. She took from her pocket a copy of the _Ledger_, adjusted her eye-glasses, and continued:
"ARCHIBALD BLINKSOP, for weeks I have basked in the sunlight of your existence. Your celestial smile, shedding a tranquil calm o'er my perturbed spirit, has been my daily sustenance. Your ethereal form, beautiful as an houri, has, with its subtle fascination, enthralled and steeped in bliss my innermost soul, lifting me as it were into a purer, a holier existence. Your--"
"Oh-h," moaned the wretched ARCHIBALD, "_please_ stop. That's COBB, Jr. I _know_ it is. When I was sea-sick on the canal, they read a chapter to me just like that, instead of giving me an emetic, and I was out of my head all next day."
"But you _do_ love me, don't you, ARCHIBALD?--just a very small fragment, you know."
She seized him by the ear and kissed him twice.
"Come, own up now," said she, "that from the first moment you saw me, you have felt a sort of a spooney hankering, and a general looseness, including a desire to write poetry and use hair-oil, and wear pretty neckties; a sort of a feeling that your clothes don't fit you, and you can't bear the sight of gravy, and dote on lavender kids, and want to part your hair in the middle. _That's_ being in love, ARCHIE. That's--"