208 The Best Fourteen-Hander in England. 



little skeleton account of the proceedings, as he fancied and hoped 

 they would be, for the edification of his next week's readers. "Old 

 Bung" suggested that I should be bound over to keep the peace at 

 once to all her Majesty's liege subjects, but the magistrates' clerk 

 thought they could hardly go so far as that, and I left the court, as 

 Mr. Russell observed, without a " stain on my character." But, if 

 she was to be believed, the case terminated quite to the satisfaction 

 of the eldest Miss Simpkinson, who confidentially whispered to a 

 friend, at a little tea-party at old Mrs. Snuffleton's on the same 

 evening, " You can't think, my dear, what a relief it was to my 

 mind when I heard that the wretched young man had confessed his 

 guilt. There is something so awful in the thought of having to 

 bear evidence against a fellow creature in a charge of such magni- 

 tude j and then the idea of ' kissing ' the book in the presence of 

 so many people. I really think, my dear, that I could never have 

 gone through it!" 



I am afraid the reader will begin to fancy that I am something 

 like the little mare very hard to pull up when I have once bolted j 

 so I will crave his patience no longer than just to inform him what 

 became of the young lady and her lac of rupees. As her old father 

 hinted, they proceeded at once to Cheltenham, and three months 

 after I read in the fashionable intelligence of the Bee the following 



paragraph : " At Cheltenham, on the inst., the lovely and 



accomplished daughter of Major , late of Chunee Villa, in this 



county, was united to the Hon. , &c." So that prize was lost 



to me for ever. But if that little paragraph in the Bee did cause 

 me any pangs of regret, they all vanished soon after, when I 

 received a letter from a friend, who was hunting down at Leaming- 

 ton in the following spring, and where the lady to whose hand I 

 had once the ambition to aspire was the belle of the season. On 

 the first sheet of the letter was pasted a slip, cut out of a Leaming- 

 ton paper, headed, " Elopement in fashionable life," which informed 

 the world that the Honourable Mrs. , daughter of that dis- 

 tinguished Indian officer , had a few days previously left her 



home, &c. It promised further particulars in a future number, and 



