Mohawks: A Novel. Volume 3 of 3Braddon, M. E. (Mary Elizabeth)
General
Mohawks: A Novel. Volume 3 of 3
Braddon, M. E. (Mary Elizabeth)
Fiction
After breakfast, Durnford proposed that Irene should do a little
shopping, and then it occurred to the bride for the first time that all
her wardrobe was at Fairmile Court.
"And I am to cost you money at the very beginning!" she said dolefully.
"Dearest, it will be bliss to spend my money in such sweet service."
"Ah, but wait! I have twenty guineas in my purse, which my father gave
me a week ago, my quarterly allowance of pocket-money. That will buy all
I shall want for the present; and I daresay he will let me have my
clothes from Fairmile. However angry he may be, he will scarcely insist
upon keeping my clothes."
"It would assuredly be a petty form of resentment. Well, dearest, may I
go shopping with you? or would you rather go alone in a chair?"
"I would rather go with you."
"Then we'll just walk quietly into Holborn, as if we were an old married
couple."
Irene put on her cloak and hood in front of a Venetian glass, while
Herrick walked up and down the room and glanced somewhat uneasily from
the windows, expecting the Squire's arrival.
They had breakfasted in a leisurely fashion, and it was now two o'clock.
There had been ample time for Mr. Bosworth to go to Parson Keith, and
having obtained his information from the parson, who knew the
destination of the newly-married couple, to come on to Bloomsbury
Square. Yet there was still no sign of pursuit. Nor did anything occur
all that afternoon to interrupt the serenity of the bride and
bridegroom. They went together to the mercer's and to the milliner's,
and Irene made her purchases on a very modest scale, and well within the
limits of her pocket-money, while her husband discreetly waited at the
door of the shop, and exercised a patience rare after the halcyon days
of the honeymoon.
"How good you are to wait for me!" said Irene, as she rejoined him;
"shopkeepers are so slow, and they pester one so to buy more than one
wants."
"If you were like Mrs. Skerritt, who haunts every sale-room and bids for
everything she sees, your catalogue of wants would not be completed half
so easily," answered Herrick; "jealous though I am of your absence, I
must own you have been vastly quick."
"But pray who is Mrs. Skerritt?" asked Irene. "Stay, she is the lady who
was so kind to you. I should like to know her."
"Nay, love, I think it were better not, though there are great ladies
who ask her to their houses, and pretend to adore her--Lady Mary
Montagu, for instance. But my young wife must choose her friends with
the utmost discretion."
"I wish for no friends whom you do not care for," said his bride; "and
now, Herrick, when am I to see the new comedy? It is hard that all the
town should have admired my husband's play, while I know so little about
it."
"Shall we go to Drury Lane this evening?"
"I should love to go."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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