"
"But how on earth did you get to know about it all?" asked her friend, in
admiring wonder.
"It was a mystery--" said Vera.
"Of course it was a mystery, a mystery that baffled everybody. What
beats me is how you found out--"
"Oh, about the jewels? I invented that part," explained Vera; "I mean
the mystery was where old Betsy's arrears of rent were to come from; and
she would have hated leaving that jolly quince tree."
THE FORBIDDEN BUZZARDS
"Is matchmaking at all in your line?"
Hugo Peterby asked the question with a certain amount of personal
interest.
"I don't specialise in it," said Clovis; "it's all right while you're
doing it, but the after-effects are sometimes so disconcerting--the mute
reproachful looks of the people you've aided and abetted in matrimonial
experiments. It's as bad as selling a man a horse with half a dozen
latent vices and watching him discover them piecemeal in the course of
the hunting season. I suppose you're thinking of the Coulterneb girl.
She's certainly jolly, and quite all right as far as looks go, and I
believe a certain amount of money adheres to her. What I don't see is
how you will ever manage to propose to her. In all the time I've known
her I don't remember her to have stopped talking for three consecutive
minutes. You'll have to race her six times round the grass paddock for a
bet, and then blurt your proposal out before she's got her wind back. The
paddock is laid up for hay, but if you're really in love with her you
won't let a consideration of that sort stop you, especially as it's not
your hay.
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