very comfortable match, but it was not a splendid one, and Mrs. Ingram, in putting the young girl forward, had primed herself with the highest expectations. The marriage was so good that it was a vast pity it was not a little better. If Crawford's income had only been twice as large again, Mrs. Ingram would have pushed Elizabeth into his arms, relaxed in some degree the consuming eagerness with which she viewed the social field, and settled down, possibly, to contentment and veracity. That was a bad year in the matrimonial market, for higher offers were not freely made. Elizabeth was greatly admired, but the ideal suitor did not present himself. I suspect that Mrs. Ingram's charms as a mother-in-law had been accurately gauged. Crawford pushed his suit, with low-toned devotion, and he was at last accepted with a good grace. There had been, I think, a certain amount of general indignation at his being kept waiting, and Mrs. Ingram was accused here and there, of not knowing a first-rate man when she saw one. "I never said she was honest," a trenchant critic was heard to observe, "but at least I supposed she was clever." Crawford was not afraid of her; he told me so distinctly.
"I defy her to quarrel with me," he said, "and I don't despair of making her like me."
"Like you!" I answered. "That's easily done. The difficulty will be in your liking her."
"Oh, I do better—I admire her," he said. "She knows so perfectly what she wants. It's a rare quality. I shall have a very fine woman for my mother-in-law."
Elizabeth's own preference bore down the scale in Crawford's favor a little, I think; how much I hardly know. She liked him, and thought her mother took little account of her likes (and the young girl was too well-behaved to expect it). Mrs. Ingram reflected probably that her pink and white complexion would last longer if she were married to a man she fancied. At any rate, as I have said, the engagement was at last announced, and Crawford came in person to tell me of it. I had never seen a happier-looking man; and his image, as I beheld it that morning, has lived in my memory all these years, as an embodiment of youthful confidence and deep security. He had said that the art of knowing what one wants was rare, but he apparently possessed it. He had got what he wanted, and the sense of possession was exquisite to him. I see again my shabby little consulting-room, with an oil-cloth on the floor, and a paper, representing seven hundred and forty times (I once counted them ) a young woman with a pitcher on her head, on the walls; and in the midst of it I see Crawford standing upright, with his thumbs in the arm-holes of his waistcoat, his head thrown back, and his eyes as radiant as two planets.
"You are too odiously happy," I said. "I should like to give you a dose of something to tone you down."
"If you could give me a sleeping potion," he answered, "I should be greatly obliged to you. Being engaged is all very well, but I want to be married. I should like to sleep through my engagement to wake up and find myself a husband."
"Is your wedding-day fixed?" I asked.
"The twenty-eighth of April—three months hence. I declined to leave the house last night before it was settled. I offered three weeks, but Elizabeth laughed me to scorn. She says it will take a month to make her wedding-dress. Mrs. Ingram has a list of reasons as long as your arm, and every one of them is excellent; that is the abomination of it. She has a genius for the practical. I mean to profit by it; I shall make her turn my mill-wheel for me. But meanwhile it's an eternity! "
"Don't complain of good things lasting long," said I. "Such eternities are always too short. I have always heard that the three months before marriage are the happiest time of life. I advise you to make the most of these."
"Oh, I am happy, I don't deny it," cried Crawford. "But I propose to be happier yet." And he marched away with the step of a sun-god beginning his daily circuit. He was happier yet, in the sense that with each succeeding week he became more convinced of the charms of Elizabeth Ingram, and more profoundly attuned to the harmonies of prospective matrimony. I, of course, saw little of him, for he was always in attendance upon his betrothed, at the dwelling of whose parents I was a rare visitor. Whenever I did see him, he seemed to have sunk another six inches further into the mystic depths. He formally swallowed his words when I recalled to him his former brave speeches about the single life.
"All I can say is," he answered, "that I was an immeasurable donkey. Every argument that I formerly used in favor of not marrying, now seems to me to have an exactly opposite application. Every reason
