Punch: Punch (70.1876)

Mat 6, 1876.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

183

ROSE-LEAF CRUMPLES.

Edith. "Oh dear ! I AX so Tired ! "

Loving Husband. "What has Fatigued you, my Pippetywippety Poppet?"
Edith. " Oh ! I have had to Hold up my Parasol all the Time I was
in the Carriage ! "

A CHANCE FOE " OUIDA."

The Herzegovinians have had their Amazon, as most
guerilla armies have had before them. What a heroine
this Mademoiselle Merkxjs would make for " Outda."
or the romantic sisterhood who toil after her in vain
through the unwholesome jungles of the improbable and
the improper ! A Dutch Creole, born at Java, where she
possesses immense estates, attached to the staff of the
unpronounceable one, Ljubibratics, equipping an insur-
gent squadron at her own expense, out of funds sup-
plied from her chateau and grounds m the neighbourhood
of Jerusalem ! Lovely, accomplished, raven-haired,
wasp-waisted, gazelle-eyed, Diana-limbed, and only
twenty-four years of age, she is all a lady-novelist can
require for a starting-point! There is your heroine.
Stew her down in the stock extracted from a chapter on
liqueurs, a discussion about old china and bric-d-brac,
and the descriptive detail of twenty or thirty dresses by
Worth ; pepper the mixture with quotations from the
naughtiest French novels and the best known Italian
proverbs, with a sprinkling of oaths in as many lan-
guages as can be found room for ; and, after letting her
simmer through the proper number of pages with a
Florentine duke, whose limpid eyes dive down to the
soles of her "Hessians"—for she wears male Herze-
govinian attire—with a Parisian cocodette for her rival,
dish-up with a garnish of the raciest bits of the last
decade's worst literature, and you have a novel which
would certainly be in hot demand for three weeks at
least among the more reckless subscribers to Mudie's
Library—who, in their hunger for excitement, cannot
wait to discriminate the taste of what they swallow, or
the effect of it upon the ravenous devourer.

The Genius of the Ring-.

An excitable Lady, who disapproves of the paternal
and maternal government of the School-Board, being
summoned for not sending her children to school the
other day, suddenly took off her wedding-ring, and
threw it at the head of the sitting Magistrate. Mr. Ben-
son, the Magistrate at the wicket, dexterously caught the
ring (amid cries of " Well fielded!" by the Clerks), and
proceeded good-humouredly to ask the irascible mother
conundrums which were not calculated to calm her
troubled spirit—"Why did you throw your wedding-
ring at me ? " To which she might have reasonably
replied, " Because it is the first step to a Union." But
she didn't. We are not informed that Mr. Benson told
her that, if she could not take care of her ring, the Court
would be obliged to find her a keeper.

bered that Sir Guy was now a man well stricken in years, and , turned the chair over in among the laurel-bushes, and walked away,
so it was no wonder that such colour as remained in his white, ', leaving Sir Guy to watch the effect upon the caller when one of his
glazed-looking, hard features was of a peculiar, rosy, fresh gera- j powdered, canary-coloured Colossi should open the hall-door, and
nium tint; that his eyes were hollow and lack-lustre ; that his nose j say "Not at home ! " in answer to the first simple inquiry,
was sharp, white, and meaningless ; and, as Sir Guy was still a I But Fate willed it otherwise ; and the visitor was not to inquire
great smoker, it would have been a matter of unfeigned astonish- j at that door yet awhile.

ment to his friends had they seen him without the short clay pipe Her curiosity partially aroused by what she had seen, Bella

which was now stuck, in a careless fashion, into his bar-slit, tooth
less mouth, whose hard, shrivelled, yet brown-pink lips, held the
pipe-stem with a fixed pressure : nor would they have evinced less
surprise had they met him without the bunch of wooden matches, or
pipe-lights, which he carried, negligently, in one curved, powerless
hand, while, in the other—being old-fashioned, and not caring to
muddle himself up with new-fangled inventions—he held a lantern,
with a lighted candle within. It was this vision of

" k fine Old English Gentleman,
One of the olden time,"

that met Bella's gaze as she crossed the avenue, and entered the
side-path.

" Sir Guy seems beloved—though, no doubt, he is eccentric," she
thought to herself ; "but I may be happy here."

Seeing a stranger approaching, Sir Guy bade his bearers set him
down somewhere away, among the laurel-bushes, or in the tool-shed,
or any quiet corner, so that he might be out of the way when the
supposed visitor called—as is the fashion with fine old English hos-
pitable gentlemen when they ought to be present to receive a guest.
So the good, snub-nosed, Sabbath-clothed peasants, singing

" Please to remember
The Fifth of November,"

crossed the garden-walk. Fatigued with her walk, for a moment
she sits down on a rough-hewn bench.

I do not believe in coincidences generally; but I believe in this
coincidence, because it exactly fits into this present situation, and
helps us along.

As she sighed, she heard the roll of wheels upon a gravel-path,
and two voices—a man's and a woman's.

The woman's said, lackadaisically—and yet why should she lack-
a-daisy where so many grew?—"Carry Floss: she's rheumatic,
and the ground is rather too damp."

" Yes, my Lady.']

At that man's voice Bella started so violently that she tilted the
seat, backwards, right in among the laurel and rhododendron
shrubs, and so—fortunately for her—disappeared from view as there
passed, right in front of where she had but the moment before been
seated, a Lady in a Bath-chair, wheeled by a tall servant in a
splendid livery, carrying a little fat, wheezing, silk-eared dog, that
had seen its best days among the snows of St. Bernard in the Isles
of Newfoundland.

Bella, completely concealed by the friendly bushes, was able to
concentrate her whole attention on the Lady, while the face of her
male attendant was turned away.

(To be continued.)