However much he
may have disapproved of long engagements for other people, I doubt
whether he had any particular objection to them in his own case. A
pair of lovers are like sunset and sunrise: there are such things
every day but we very seldom see them. Theobald posed as the most
ardent lover imaginable, but, to use the vulgarism for the moment in
fashion, it was all "side." Christina was in love, as indeed she had
been twenty times already. But then Christina was impressionable and
could not even hear the name "Missolonghi" mentioned without
bursting into tears. When Theobald accidentally left his sermon case
behind him one Sunday, she slept with it in her bosom and was
forlorn when she had as it were to disgorge it on the following
Sunday; but I do not think Theobald ever took so much as an old
toothbrush of Christina's to bed with him. Why, I knew a young man
once who got hold of his mistress's skates and slept with them for a
fortnight and cried when he had to give them up.
CHAPTER XII
THEOBALD'S engagement was all very well as far as it went, but there
was an old gentleman with a bald head and rosy cheeks in a
counting-house in Paternoster Row who must sooner or later be told
of what his son had in view, and Theobald's heart fluttered when he
asked himself what view this old gentleman was likely to take of the
situation.
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