Let us come to business at once. To tell you the truth, I, for one, am tired of this heiress-hunting, and a man may spend a fortune in the chace before he can win one."
"You despair then, positively, of the widow you have courted so long?" asked Tomlinson.
"Utterly!" rejoined Ned, whose addresses had been limited solely to the dames of the middling class, and who had imagined himself at one time, as he punningly expressed it, sure of a dear rib from Cheapside. "Utterly; she was very civil to me at first, but when I proposed, asked me, with a blush, for my "references." "References?" said I; "why, I want the place of your husband, my charmer, not your footman!"—The dame was inexorable, said she could not take me without a character, but hinted that I might be the lover instead of the bridegroom; and when I scorned the suggestion, and pressed for the parson, she told me point blank, with her unlucky city pronunciation, "That she would never accompany me to the Halter!"
