LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 452, 25 November 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

FINE WEATHER AND FAIR WOMEN.

(From the Argosy )

( Concluded.)

Mrs Leighton hastened to introduce Mr Smith, and Mr Leighton was giving him the welcome due to a guest so heralded, when, to the astonishment of all, Mr Heathcote stepped forward, and claimed him as an old acquaintance. ‘ What, Heathcote ! do you know Mr Smith ? where did you meet ?’— ‘ Where ! in London of course, at old Cheatham’s chambers. Know him ! why, it’s on my business he comes. I might have saved you the trouble, by the way, Smith, if I had known I should be detained in town till to day, but I daresay you don’t mind—a little country air is no bad thing, after being shut up all the summer in those confoundedly close chambers.’ No transformation scene in Christmas pantomime was ever so complete. The handsome stranger, instead of being the expected heir, was the despised lawyer’s clerk! —all saw at once their blunder. Smith ! what more natural than that the lawyer’s clerk, the obscure man of business, should be Smith ? Why were they so precipitate ? —lt was to his good looks and calm assurance that the mistake was to be ascribed, and they most unreasonably felt angry with him as the cause. But nothing was to be said ; blank looks and slight edgings away from his vicinity alone were perceptible. The change was so slight, that the object of it, encased as he was in a goodly armour of conceit, seemed totally unaware of it. He had taken all the homage, all the attentions as the natural consequence of the remarkable personal qualifications of which he was so intensely conscious. The last thing he would have suspected was that it could have arisen from a mistake; and so he stood still blandly smiling upon all around, and apparently not remarking that except from the youngest Miss Leighton his smiles found no reflection in the fair faces of his new friends. A still more dreadful idea was dawning in their minds. If this was the lawyer’s clerk, where was the real Smith ?—the heir ? Was it possible that the insignificant-looking, dusty individual, whom they had been so anxious to ‘ shunt off into a siding ’ —whom they had thrown, as it were, into the very jaws of the enemy—who had spent the whole afternoon making the acquaintance of the two poor cousins, could be the prince in disguise—the husband whom all were so anxious to secure ? It was too dreadful ! They could have bitten off their own tongues in despite, and beaten him for stealing upon them thus, a dusty, undistinguished pedestrian. What was to be done ? To acknowledge their blunder would be to expose themselves to inextinguishable laughter, so they made the best of it, like ladies as they were ; said nothing to oppose the good-natured invitation Mr Leighton gave the lawyer’s clerk to spend a few days in the country air ha seemed to enjoy so much ; and hid their mortification as well as they could. And what were the consequences of this embroglio. They were threefold. Before a week was out the right Mr Smith had proposed to, and been accepted by, the disengaged one of the poor cousins, and had promised a living to the fiance of the other, his college friend and duty. And the other Mr Smith, the handsome imposter, as the ladies in their hearts called him, but who had really never dreamed of deceiving anyone, had eloped with the youngest Miss Leighton. The further consequences being, as we hope, the perfect happiness of two couples, and in the case of the third, no worse results than another family of poor cousins to be snubbed and despised.

Moral. Young ladies should not be too much taken with good looks and assurred manners ; and there should not be so many persons of the name of Smith.