She Kept the Letter.

Evening Star, Issue 7646, 23 June 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

She Kept the Letter.

There is a curious and well-authenticated story about a deceased peer which is worth repetition. When just ot age, he had the not uncommon mania of falling in love on the slightest provocation, and the less common habit of making offers of marriage, which, as long as ho confined his addresses to ladies of his own rank, was of no consequence, as they were treated as jokes. Jiut one day his fancy fell on a strapping dairymaid about l'2in tiller and six years older than himself, and it was shortly afterwards reported to his mother, the countess, that big Polly had shown a fellow-servant a written oiler of marriage from the little lord. Immense excitement, at the end of which the confidential housekeeper was sent on a mission of inquiry, with full powers of compromise to the strapping Cinderella of the dairy. The ambassadress offered her an exed’ent situation at great wages and a handsome present in hand if she would go to a distant estate and promise to have no more to say to her noble lover. The damsel accepted the offers without hesitation —indeed with eagerness—answering : “ Make your mind easy, Mrs ; as I wouldn’t marry the little creature if every ’air on his ’ed was hung with diamonds. I’m keeping company with a young man as stands six feet in his stockings, and can jump a gate without putting a finger on it.’’ “All right, my good Mary, I knew you were a good girl, and you had better start before his lordship comes back from London, and there's something to pay expenses,” producing a new crackling Bank of Kngland note for fifty pounds. “And now, Mary, you will give up his lordship’s letter?” “ No, indeed, I shan’t,” was the answer ; “my young man is willing to marry me as soon as I can get ready, but I shall keep this letter to show him, if ever he's saucy, that if I liked I might a’ married a hearl !”