“Yours affectionately,“LUCY FOUNTAIN”
“It is the letter of a sweet girl, David, with a noble heart; and she has taken a noble revenge of me for what I said to her the other day, and made her cry, like a little brute as I am. Why, how glum you look!”
“Eve,” said David, “do you think I will accept this from her without herself?”
“Of course you will. Don't be too greedy, David. Leave the girl in peace; she has shown you what she will do and what she won't. One such friend as this is worth a hundred lovers. Give me her dear little note.”
While Eve was persuing it, David went out, but soon returned, with his best coat on, and his hat in his hand. Eve asked in some surprise where he was going in such a hurry.
“To her.”
“Well, David, now I come to read her letter quietly, it is a woman's letter all over; you may read it which way you like. What need had she to tell me she has just refused offers? And then she tells me she is all alone. That sounds like a hint. The company of a friend might he agreeable. Brush your coat first, at any rate; there's something white on it; it is a paper; it is pinned on. Come here. Why, what is this? It is written on. 'Adieu.'” And Eve opened her eyes and mouth as well.
She asked him when he wore the coat last.
“The day before yesterday.”
“Were you in company of any girls?”
“Not I.”
“But this is written by a girl, and it is pinned on by a girl; see how it is quilted in!! that's proof positive. Oh! oh! oh! look here. Look at these two 'Adieus'—the one in the letter and this; they are the same—precisely the same. What, in Heaven's name, is the meaning of this? Were you in her company that night?”
“No.”
“Will you swear that?”
“No, I can't swear it, because I was asleep a part of the time; but waking in her company I was not.”
“It is her writing, and she pinned it on you.”
“How can that be, Eve?”
“I don't know; I am sure she did, though. Look at this 'Adieu' and that; you'll never get it out of my head but what one hand wrote them both. You are so green, a girl would come behind you and pin it on you, and you never feel her.”
While saying these words, Eve slyly repinned it on him without his feeling or knowing anything about it.
David was impatient to be gone, but she held him a minute to advise him.
“Tell her she must and shall. Don't take a denial. If you are cowardly, she will be bold; but if you are bold and resolute, she will knuckle down. Mind that; and don't go about it with such a face as that, as long as my arm. If she says 'No,' you have got the ship to comfort you. Oh! I am so happy!”
“No, Eve,” said David, “if she won't give me herself, I'll never take her ship. I'd die a foretopman sooner;” and, with these parting words, he renewed all his sister's anxiety. She sat down sorrowfully, and the horrible idea gained on her that there was mania in David's love for Lucy.
DAVID had one advantage over others that were now hunting Lucy. Mrs. Wilson had unwittingly given him pretty plain directions how to find her farmhouse; and as Eve, in the exercise of her discretion, or indiscretion, had shown David Lucy's letter, he had only to ride to Harrowden and inquire. But, on the other hand, his competitors were a few miles nearer the game, and had a day's start.
David got a horse and galloped to Harrowden, fed him at the inn, and asked where Mrs. Wilson's farm was. The waiter, a female, did not know, but would inquire. Meantime David asked for two sheets of paper, and wrote a few lines on each; then folded them both (in those days envelopes were not), but did not seal them. Mrs. Wilson's farm turned out to be only two miles from Harrowden, and the road easy to find. He was soon there; gave his horse to one of the farm-boys, and went into the kitchen and asked if Miss Fountain lived there. This question threw him into the hands of Jenny, who invited him to follow her, and, unlike your powdered and noiseless lackey, pounded the door with her fist, kicked it open with her foot, and announced him with that thunderbolt of language which fell so inopportunely on Lucy's self-congratulations.
The look Mrs. Wilson cast on Lucy was droll enough; but when David's square shoulders and handsome face filled up the doorway, a second look followed that spoke folios.
Lucy rose, and with heightened color, but admirable self-possession, welcomed David like a valued friend.
Mrs. Wilson's greeting was broad and hearty; and, very soon after she had made him sit down, she bounced up, crying: “You will stay dinner now you be come, and I must see as they don't starve you.” So saying, out she went; but, looking back at the door, was transfixed by an arrow of reproach from her nursling's eye.
Lucy's reception of David, kind as it was, was not encouraging to one coming on David's errand, for there was the wrong shade of amity in it.
In times past it would have cooled David with misgivings, but now he did not give himself time to be discouraged; he came to make a last desperate effort, and he made it at once.
“Miss Lucy, I have got theRajah,thanks to you.”
“Thanks to me, Mr. Dodd? Thanks to your own high character and merit.”
“No, Miss Lucy, you know better, and I know better, and there is your own sweet handwriting to prove it.”
“Miss Dodd has showed you my letter?”
“How could she help it?”
“What a pity! how injudicious!”
“The truth is like the light; why keep it out? Yes; what I have worked for, and battled the weather so many years, and been sober and prudent, and a hard student at every idle hour—that has come to me in one moment from your dear hand.”
“It is a shame.”
“Bless you, Miss Lucy,” cried David, not noting the remark.
Lucy blushed, and the water stood in her eyes. She murmured softly: “You should not say Miss Lucy; it is not customary. You should say Lucy, or Miss Fountain.”
Thisaproposremark by way of a female diversion.
“Then let me say Lucy to-day, for perhaps I shall never say that, or anything that is sweet to say again. Lucy, you know what I came for?”
“Oh, yes, to receive my congratulations.”
“More than that, a great deal—to ask you to go halves in theRajah.”
Lucy's eyebrows demanded an explanation.
“She is worth two thousand a year to her commander; and that is too much for a bachelor.”
Lucy colored and smiled. “Why, it is only just enough for bachelors to live upon.”
“It is too much for me alone under the circumstances,” said David, gravely; and there was a little silence.
“Lucy, I love you. With you theRajahwould be a godsend. She will help me keep you in the company you have been used to, and were made to brighten and adorn; but without you I cannot take her from your hand, and, to speak plain, I won't.”
“Oh, Mr. Dodd!”
“No, Lucy; before I knew you, to command a ship was the height of my ambition—her quarter-deck my Heaven on earth; and this is a clipper, I own it; I saw her in the docks. But you have taught me to look higher. Share my ship and my heart with me, and certainly the ship will be my child, and all the dearer to me that she came to us from her I love. But don't say to me, 'Me you shan't have; you are not good enough for that; but there is a ship for you in my place.' I wouldn't accept a star out of the firmament on those terms.”
“How unreasonable! On the contrary you should say, 'I am doubly fortunate: I escape a foolish, weak companion for life, and I have a beautiful ship.' But friendship such as mine for you was never appreciated; I do you injustice; you only talk like that to tease me and make me unhappy.”
“Oh, Lucy, Lucy, did you ever know me—”
“There, now, forgive me; and own you are not in earnest.”
“This will show you,” said David, sadly; and he took out two letters from his bosom. “Here are two letters to the secretary. In one I accept the ship with thanks, and offer to superintend her when her rigging is being set up; and in this one I decline her altogether, with my humble and sincere thanks.”
“Oh yes, you are very humble, sir,” said Lucy. “Now—dear friend—listen to reason. You have others—”
“Excuse my interrupting you, but it is a rule with me never to reason about right and wrong; I notice that whoever does that ends by choosing wrong. I don't go to my head to find out my duty, I go to my heart; and what little manhood there is in me all cries out against me compounding with the woman I love, and taking a ship instead of her.”
“How unkind you are! It is not as if I was under no obligations to you. Is not my life worth a ship? an angel like me?”
“I can't see it so. It was a greater pleasure to me to save your life, as you call it, than it could be to you. I can't let that into the account. A woman is a woman, but a man is a man; and I will be under no obligation to you but one.”
“What arrogance!”
“Don't you be angry; I'll love you and bless you all the same. But I am a man, and a man I'll die, whether I die captain of a ship or of a foretop. Poor Eve!”
“See how power tries people, and brings out their true character. Since you commanded theRajahyou are all changed. You used to be submissive; now you must have your own way entirely. You will fling my poor ship in my face unless I give you—but this is really using force—yes, Mr. Dodd, this is using force. Somebody has told you that my sex yield when downright compulsion is used. It is true; and the more ungenerous to apply it;” and she melted into a few placid tears.
David did not know this sign of yielding in a woman, and he groaned at the sight and hung his head.
“Advise me what I had better do.”
To this singular proposal, David, listening to the ill advice of the fiend Generosity, groaned out, “Why should you be tormented and made cry?”
“Why indeed?”
“Nothing can change me; I advise you to cut it short.”
“Oh, do you? very well. Why did you say 'poor Eve'?”
“Ah, poor thing! she cried for joy when she read your letter, but when I go back she will cry for grief;” and his voice faltered.
“I will cut this short, Mr. Dodd; give me that paper.”
“Which?”
“The wicked one, where you refuse myRajah.”
David hesitated.
“You are no gentleman, sir, if you refuse a lady. Give it me this instant,” cried Lucy, so haughtily and imperiously that David did not know her, and gave her the letter with a half-cowed air.
She took it, and with both her supple white hands tore it with insulting precision exactly in half. “There, sir and there, sir” (exactly in four); “and there” (in eight, with malicious exactness); “and there”; and, though it seemed impossible to effect another separation, yet the taper fingers and a resolute will reduced it to tiny bits. She then made a gesture to throw them in the fire, but thought better of it and held them.
David looked on, almost amused at this zealous demolition of a thing he could so easily replace. He said, part sadly, part doggedly, part apologetically, “I can write another.”
“But you will not. Oh, Mr. Dodd, don't you see?!”
He looked up at her eagerly. To his surprise, her haughty eagle look had gone, and she seemed a pitying goddess, all tenderness and benignity; only her mantling, burning cheek showed her to be woman.
She faltered, in answer to his wild, eager look. “Was I ever so rude before? What right have I to tear your letter unless I—”
The characteristic full stop, and, above all, the heaving bosom, the melting eye, and the red cheek, were enough even for poor simple David. Heaven seemed to open on him. His burning kisses fell on the sweet hands that had torn his death-warrant. No resistance. She blushed higher, but smiled. His powerful arm curled round her. She looked a little scared, but not much. He kissed her sweet cheek: the blush spread to her very forehead at that, but no resistance. As the winged and rapid bird, if her feathers be but touched with a speck of bird-lime, loses all power of flight, so it seemed as if that one kiss, the first a stranger had ever pressed on Lucy's virgin cheek, paralyzed her eel-like and evasive powers; under it her whole supple frame seemed to yield as David drew her closer and closer to him, till she hid her forehead and wet eyelashes on his shoulder, and murmured:
“How could I letyoube unhappy?!”
Neither spoke for a while. Each felt the other's heart beat; and David drank that ecstasy of silent, delirious bliss which comes to great hearts once in a life.
Had he not earned it?
By some mighty instinct Mrs. Wilson knew when to come in. She came to the door just one minute after Lucy had capitulated, and, turning the handle, but without opening the door, bawled some fresh directions to Jenny: this was to enable Lucy to smooth her ruffled feathers, if necessary, and look Agnes. But Lucy's actual contact with that honest heart seemed to have made a change in her; instead of doing Agnes, she confronted (after a fashion of her own) the situation she had so long evaded.
“Oh, nurse!” she cried, and wreathed her arms round her.
“Don't cry, my lamb! I can guess.”
“Cry? Oh no; I would not pay him so poor a compliment. It was to say, 'Dear nurse, you must love Mr. Dodd as well as me now.'”
The dame received this indirect intelligence with hearty delight.
“That won't cost me much trouble,” said she. “He is the one I'd have picked out of all England for my nursling. When a young man is kind to an old woman, it is a good sign; but la! his face is enough for me: who ever saw guile in such a face as that. Aren't ye hungry by this time? Dinner will be ready in about a minute.”
“Nurse, can I speak to you a word?”
“Yes, sure.”
It was to inquire whether she would invite Miss Dodd.
“She loves her brother very dearly, and it is cruel to separate them. Mr. Dodd will be nearly always here now, will he not?”
“You may take your davy of that.”
In a very few minutes a note was written, and Mrs. Wilson's eldest son, a handsome young farmer, started in the covered cart with his mother's orders “to bring the young lady willy-nilly.”
The holy allies both openly scouted Kenealy's advice, and both slyly stepped down into the town and acted on it. Mr. Fountain then returned to Font Abbey. Their two advertisements appeared side by side, and exasperated them.
After dinner Mrs. Wilson sent Lucy and David out to take a walk. At the gate they met with a little interruption; a carriage drove up; the coachman touched his hat, and Mrs. Bazalgette put her head out of the window.
“I came to take you back, love.”
David quaked.
“Thank you, aunt; but it is not worth while now.”
“Ah!” said Mrs. Bazalgette, casting a venomous look on David; “I am too late, am I? Poor girl!”
Lucy soothed her aunt with the information that she was much happier now than she had been for a long time past. For this was a fencing-match.
“May I have a word in private with my niece?” inquired Mrs. Bazalgette, bitterly, of David.
“Why not?” said David stoutly; but his heart turned sick as he retired. Lucy saw the look of anxiety.
“Lucy,” said Mrs. Bazalgette, “you left me because you are averse to matrimony, and I urged you to it; of course, with those sentiments, you have no idea of marrying that man there. I don't suspect you of such hypocrisy, and therefore I say come home with me, and you shall marry nobody; your inclination shall be free as air.”
“Aunt,” said Lucy, demurely, “why didn't you come yesterday? I always said those who love me best would find me first, and you let Mr. Dodd come first. I am so sorry!”
“Then your pretended aversion to marriage was all hypocrisy, was it?”
Lucy informed her that marriage was a contract, and the contracting parties two, and no more—the bride and bridegroom; and that to sign a contract without reading it is silly, and meaning not to keep it is wicked. “So,” said she, “I read the contract over in the prayer-book this morning, for fear of accidents.”
My reader may, perhaps, be amused at this admission; but Mrs. Bazalgette was disgusted, and inquired, “What stuff is the girl talking now?”
“It is called common sense. Well, I find the contract is one I can carry out with Mr. Dodd, and with nobody else. I can love him a little, can honor him a great deal, and obey him entirely. I begin now. There he is; and if you feel you cannot show him the courtesy of making him one in our conversation, permit me to retire and relieve his solitude.”
“Mighty fine; and if you don't instantly leave him and come home, you shall never enter my house again.”
“Unless sickness or trouble should visit your house, and then you will send for me, and I shall come.”
Mrs. Bazalgette (to the coachman).—“Home!”
Lucy made her a polite obeisance, to keep up appearances before the servants and the farm-people, who were gaping. She, whose breeding was inferior, flounced into a corner without returning it. The carriage drove off.
David inquired with great anxiety whether something had not been said to vex her.
“Not in the least,” replied Lucy, calmly. “Little things and little people can no longer vex me. I have great duties to think of and a great heart to share them with me. Let us walk toward Harrowden; we may perhaps meet a friend.”
Sure enough, just on this side Harrowden they met the covered cart, and Eve in it, radiant with unexpected delight. The engaged ones—for such they had become in those two miles—mounted the cart, and the two men sat in front, and Eve and Lucy intertwined at the back, and opened their hearts to each other.
Eve. And you have taken the paper off again?
Lucy. What paper? It was no longer applicable.
I HAVE already noticed that Lucy, after capitulation, laid down her arms gracefully and sensibly. When she was asked to name a very early day for the wedding, she opposed no childish delay to David's happiness, for theRajahwas to sail in six weeks and separate them. So the license was got, and the wedding-day came; and all Lucy's previous study of the contract did not prevent her from being deeply affected by the solemn words that joined her to David in holy matrimony.
She bore up, though, stoutly; for her sense of propriety and courtesy forbade her to cloud a festivity. But, when the post-chaise came to convey bride and bridegroom on their little tour, and she had to leave Mrs. Wilson and Eve for a whole week, the tears would not be denied; and, to show how perilous a road matrimony is, these two risked a misunderstanding on their wedding-day, thus: Lucy, all alone in the post-chaise with David, dissolved—a perfect Niobe—gushing at short intervals. Sometimes a faint explanation gurgled out with the tears: “Poor Eve! her dear little face was working so not to cry. Oh! oh! I should not have minded so much if she had cried right out.” Then, again, it was “Poor Mrs. Wilson! I was only a week with her, for all her love. I have made a c—at's p—paw of her—oh!”
Then, again, “Uncle Bazalgette has never noticed us; he thinks me a h—h—ypocrite.” But quite as often they flowed without any accompanying reason.
Now if David had been a poetaster, he would have said: “Why these tears? she has got me. Am I not more than an equivalent to these puny considerations?” and all this salt water would have burned into his vanity like liquid caustic. If he had been a poet, he would have said: “Alas! I make her unhappy whom I hoped to make happy”; and with this he would have been sad, and so prolonged her sadness, and perhaps ended by sulking. But David had two good things—a kind heart and a skin not too thin: and such are the men that make women happy, in spite of their weak nerves and craven spirits.
He gave her time; soothed her kindly; but did not check her weakness dead short.
At last my Lady Chesterfield said to him, penitently, “This is a poor compliment to you, Mr. Dodd”; and then Niobized again, partly, I believe, with regret that she was behaving so discourteously.
“It is very natural,” said David, kindly, “but we shall soon see them all again, you know.”
Presently she looked in his radiant face, with wet eyes, but a half-smile. “You amaze me; you don't seem the least terrified at what we have done.”
“Not a bit,” cried David, like a cheerful horn: “I have been in worse peril than this, and so have you. Our troubles are all over; I see nothing but happiness ahead.” He then drew a sunny picture of their future life, to all which she listened demurely; and, in short, he treated her little feminine distress as the summer sun treats a mist that tries to vie with it. He soon dried her up, and when they reached their journey's end she was as bright as himself.
THEY had been married a week. A slight change, but quite distinct to an observer of her sex, bloomed in Lucy's face and manner. A new beauty was in her face—the blossom of wifehood. Her eyes, though not less modest, were less timid than before; and now they often met David's full, and seemed to sip affection at them. When he came near her, her lovely frame showed itself conscious of his approach. His queen, though he did not know it, was his vassal. They sat at table at a little inn, twenty miles from Harrowden, for they were on their return to Mrs. Wilson. Lucy went to the window while David settled the bill. At the window it is probable she had her own thoughts, for she glided up behind David, and, fanning his hair with her cool, honeyed breath, she said, in the tone of a humble inquirer seeking historical or antiquarian information, “I want to ask you a question, David: are you happytoo?”
David answered promptly, but inarticulately; so his reply is lost to posterity. Conjecture alone survives.
One disappointment awaited Lucy at Mrs. Wilson's. There were several letters for both David and her, but none from Mr. Bazalgette. She knew by that she had lost his respect. She could not blame him, for she saw how like disingenuousness and hypocrisy her conduct must look to him. “I must trust to time and opportunity,” she said, with a sigh. She proposed to David to read all her letters, and she would read all his. He thought this a droll idea; but nothing that identified him with his royal vassal came amiss. The first letter of Lucy's that David opened was from Mr. Talboys.
“DEAR MADAM—I have heard of your marriage with Mr. Dodd, and desire to offer both you and him my cordial congratulations.
“I feel under considerable obligation to Mr. Dodd; and, should my house ever have a mistress, I hope she will be able to tempt you both to renew our acquaintance under my roof, and so give me once more that opportunity I have too little improved of showing you both the sincere respect and gratitude with which I am,
“Your very faithful servant,
Lucy was delighted with this note. “Who says it was nothing to have been born a gentleman?”
The second letter was from Reginald No. 2; and, if I only give the reader a fragment of it, I still expect his gratitude, all one as if I had disinterred a fragment of Orpheus or Tiresias.
Dear lucy.It is very ungust of you to go andMary other peeple wen youPromised me. but it is mr. dod.So i dont so much mind i likeMr. dod. he is a duc. and they allSay i am too litle and jane saysSailors always end by beenDrouned so it is only put off.But you reely must keep yourPromise to me. wen i am bigerAnd mr. Dod is drouned. myGinny pigs—
Here a white hand drew the pleasing composition out of David's hand, and dropped it on the floor; two piteous, tearful eyes were bent on him, and a white arm went tenderly round his neck to save him from the threatened fate.
At this sight Eve pounced on the horrid scroll, and hurled it, with general acclamation, into the flames.
Thus that sweet infant revenged himself, and, like Sampson, hit hardest of all at parting—in tears and flame vanished from written fiction, and, I conclude, went back to Gavarni.
There was a letter from Mr. Fountain—all fire and fury. She was never to write or speak to him any more. He was now looking out for a youth of good family to adopt and to make a Fontaine of by act of Parliament, etc., etc. A fusillade of written thunderbolts.
There was another from Mrs. Bazalgette, written with cream—of tartar and oil—of vitriol. She forgave her niece and wished her every happiness it was possible for a young person to enjoy who had deceived her relations and married beneath her. She felt pity rather than anger; and there was no reason why Mr. and Mrs. Dodd should not visit her house, as far as she was concerned; but Mr. Bazalgette was a man of very stern rectitude, and, as she could not make sure that he would treat them with common courtesy after what had passed, she thought a temporary separation might be the better course for all parties.
I may as well take this opportunity of saying that these two egotists carried out the promise of their respective letters. Mr. Fountain blustered for a year or two, and then showed manifest signs of relenting.
Mrs. Bazalgette kept cool, and wrote, in oils, twice a year to Mrs. Dodd:
Lucy had to answer these letters. In signing one of them, she took a look at her new signature and smiled. “What a dear, quaint little name mine is!” said she. “Lucy Dodd;” and she kissed the signature.
A Month after Marriage.
The Dodds took a house in London and Eve came up to them. David was nearly all day superintending the ship, but spent the whole evening with his wife at home. Zeal always produces irritation. The servant that is anxious for his employer's interest is sure to get into a passion or two with the deadness, indifference and heartless injustice of the genuine hireling. So David was often irritated and worried, and in hot water, while superintending theRajah,but the moment he saw his own door, away he threw it all, and came into the house like a jocund sunbeam. Nothing wins a woman more than this, provided she is already inclined in the man's favor. As the hour that brought David approached, Lucy's spirits and Eve's used both to rise by anticipation, and that anticipation his hearty, genial temper never disappointed.
One day Lucy came to David for information. “David, there is a singular change in me. It is since we came to London. I used to be a placid girl; now I am a fidget.”
“I don't see it, love.”
“No; how should you, dear? It always goes away when you come. Now listen. When five o'clock comes near, I turn hot and restless, and can hardly keep from the window; and if you are five minutes after your time, I really cannot keep from the window; and my nervesse crispent,and I cannot sit still. It is very foolish. What does it mean? Can you tell me?”
“Of course I can. I am just the same when people are unpunctual. It is inexcusable, and nothing is so vexing. I ought to be—”
“Oh David, what nonsense! it is not that. Could I ever be vexed with my David?”
“Well, then, there is Eve; we'll ask her.”
“If you dare, sir!” and Mrs. Dodd was carnation.
Four years after the above events
Two ladies were gossiping.
1st Lady. “What I like about Mrs. Dodd is that she is so truthful.”
2d Lady. “Oh, is she?”
1st Lady. “Yes, she is indeed. Certainly she is not a woman that blurts out unpleasant things without any necessity; she is kind and considerate in word and deed, but she is always true. She has got an eye that meets you like a little lion's eye, and a tongue without guile. I do love Mrs. Dodd dearly.”
Two Qui his were talking in Leadenhall Street.
1st Qui hi. “Well, so you are going out again.”
2d Qui hi. “Yes; they have offered me a commissionership. I must make another lac for the children.”
1st Qui hi. “When do you sail?”
2d Qui hi. “By the first good ship. I should like a good ship.”
1st Qui hi. “Well, then, you had better go out with Gentleman Dodd.”
2d Qui hi. “Gentleman Dodd? I should prefer Sailor Dodd. I don't want to founder off the Cape.”
1st Qui hi. “Oh, but this is a first-rate sailor, and a first-rate fellow altogether.”
2d Qui hi. “Then why do you call him 'Gentleman Dodd'?”
1st Qui hi. “Oh, because he is so polite. He won't stand an oath within hearing of his quarter-deck, and is particularly kind and courteous to the passengers, especially to the ladies. His ship is always full.”
2d Qui hi. “Is it? Then I'll go out with 'Gentleman Dodd.'”
———————
I SEE with some surprise that there still linger in the field of letters writers who think that, in fiction, when a personage speaks with an air of conviction, the sentiments must be the author's own. (When two of his personages give each other the lie, which represents the author? both?)
I must ask you to shun this error; for instance, do not go and take Eve Dodd's opinion of my heroine, or Mrs. Bazalgette's, for mine.
Miss Dodd, in particular, however epigrammatic she may appear, is shallow: her criticismpeche par la base.She talks too much as if young girls were in the habit of looking into their own minds, like little metaphysicians, and knowing all that goes on there; but, on the contrary, this is just what women in general don't do, and young women can't do.
No male will quite understand Lucy Fountain who does not take “instinct” and “self-deception” into the account. But with those two dews and your own intelligence, you cannot fail to unravel her, and will, I hope, thank me in your hearts for leaving you something to study, and not clogging my sluggish narrative with a mass of comment and explanation.
The End.