"I will," said Mr. Ferdinand Fitzroy.

Miss Helen Convolvulus was a charming young lady, with a hare-lip and
six thousand a-year. To Miss Helen Convolvulus then our hero paid his
addresses.

Heavens! what an uproar her relations made about the matter. "Easy to
see his intentions," said one: "a handsome fortune-hunter, who wants to
make the best of his person!"--"handsome is that handsome does," says
another; "he was turned out of the army, and murdered his
colonel;"--"never marry a beauty," said a third;--"he can admire none
but himself;"--"will have so many mistresses," said a fourth;--"make you
perpetually jealous," said a fifth;--"spend your fortune," said a
sixth;--"and break your heart," said a seventh.

Miss Helen Convolvulus was prudent and wary. She saw a great deal of
justice in what was said; and was sufficiently contented with liberty
and six thousand a-year, not to be highly impatient for a husband; but
our heroine had no aversion to a lover; especially to so handsome a
lover as Mr. Ferdinand Fitzroy. Accordingly she neither accepted nor
discarded him; but kept him on hope, and suffered him to get into debt
with his tailor, and his coach-maker. On the strength of becoming Mr.
Fitzroy Convolvulus. Time went on, and excuses and delays were easily
found; however, our hero was sanguine, and so were his parents. A
breakfast at Chiswick, and a putrid fever carried off the latter, within
one week of each other; but not till they had blessed Mr. Ferdinand
Fitzroy, and rejoiced that they had left him so well provided for.

Now, then, our hero depended solely upon the crabbed old uncle and Miss
Helen Convolvulus; the former, though a baronet and a satirist was a