Chapter 3 - Page 2

back to her with the following letter, which I wrote in
the shop: "Dear madam, don't be ridiculous. You will certainly
have further use for this. I am, etc., the Man Who Dropped the
Letter."

It pained me afterward, but too late to rescind the order, to
reflect that I had sent her a wedding present; and when next I
saw her she had been married for some months. The time was nine
o'clock of a November evening, and we were in a street of shops
that has not in twenty years decided whether to be genteel or
frankly vulgar; here it minces in the fashion, but take a step
onward and its tongue is in the cup of the ice-cream man. I
usually rush this street, which is not far from my rooms, with
the glass down, but to-night I was walking. Mary was in front of
me, leaning in a somewhat foolish way on the haw-er, and they
were chatting excitedly. She seemed to be remonstrating with him
for going forward, yet more than half admiring him for not
turning back, and I wondered why.

And after all what was it that Mary and her painter had come out
to do? To buy two pork chops. On my honour. She had been
trying to persuade him, I decided, that they were living too
lavishly. That was why she sought to draw him back. But in her
heart she loves audacity, and that is why she admired him for
pressing forward.

No sooner had they bought the chops than they scurried away like
two gleeful children to cook them. I followed, hoping to trace
them to their home, but they soon out-distanced me, and that
night I composed the following aphorism: It is idle to attempt to
overtake a pretty young woman carrying pork chops. I was now
determined to be done with her. First, however, to find out
their abode, which was probably within easy distance of the shop.
I even conceived them lured into taking their house by the
advertisement, "Conveniently situated for the Pork Emporium."

Well, one day--now this really is romantic and I am rather proud
of it. My chambers are on the second floor, and are backed by an
anxiously polite street between which and mine are little yards
called, I think, gardens. They are so small that if you have the
tree your neighbour has the shade from it. I was looking out at
my back window on the day we have come to when whom did I see but
the whilom nursery governess sitting on a chair in one of these
gardens. I put up my eye-glass to make sure, and undoubtedly it
was she. But she sat there doing nothing, which was by no means
my conception of the jade, so I brought a fieldglass to bear and
discovered that the object was merely a lady's jacket. It hung
on the back of a kitchen chair, seemed to be a furry thing, and,
I must suppose, was suspended there for an airing.