Aladdin of London, or The Lodestar

"Make us a cup of tea, Mrs. Smiggs, will you?" he asked her boisterously. "Here's my cousin come to tell me how to plant the furniture. We shan't trouble you long--just make love to the kettle and say we're in a hurry, will you now, there's a good soul."

Mrs. Smiggs took a sidelong glance at the lady, and tossing a proud but tousled head assented to the proposition in far from becoming terms.

"I'm sure, sir, that I'm always willing to oblige," she said condescendingly, "if as the young lady wouldn't like me to step out and get no cakes nor nothing--"

"No, no, no cakes, thank you, Mrs. Smiggs--just a cup of tea as you can make it and that's all. My cousin's carriage is waiting--she won't be here ten minutes--eh, what?"

The good woman left them, carrying a retroussé nose at an angle of suspicion. Willy Forrest drew an arm-chair towards the window of that which would presently be his dining-room, and having persuaded Anna to take it, he poised himself elegantly upon the arm of a sofa near by and at once invited her confidence.

"Say, Anna, now, what's the good of nonsense? Why did you let the old man send me that cheque?"

She began to pull off her gloves, slowly and with contemplative deliberation.

"I let him send it because I did not wish to marry you."

"That's just what I thought. You got in a huff about a lot of fool's talk on the course and turned it round upon me. Just like a woman--eh, what? As if I could prevent your horse going dotty. That was Farrier's business, not mine."

"But you let me back the horse."

"Of course I did. He might have won. I was just backing my luck against yours. Of course I didn't mean you to lose anything. We were just two good pals together, and what I took out of the ring would have been yours if you'd asked me. Good Lord, what a mess your father's made of it! Me with his five thou in my pocket and you calling me a blackguard. You did call me a blackguard--now didn't you, Anna?"

It was very droll to see him sitting there and for a wonder telling her something very like the truth. This, however, had been the keystone of a moderately successful life. He had always told people that he was a scamp--a kind of admission the world is very fond of. In Anna's case he found the practice quite useful. It rarely failed to win her over.

"What was I to think?" she exclaimed almost as though her perplexity distressed her. "The people say that I have cheated them and you win my money. If I don't pay you, you say that I must marry you. Will you deny that it is the truth? You won this money from me to compel me to marry you?"