Page:The Ladies' Cabinet of Fashion, Music & Romance 1832.pdf/85

 

he was told that it would be wrong to fiddle at the dances while he was in mourning. When an old man gets into trouble, he is apt to betake himself to the bottle ; when a young one becomes perplexed, he generally turns his attention to matrimony. Thus it was with Johnny, who, in those golden and joyous days when he had nothing to do but to sleep and eat and play the fiddle, never dreamt of the silken fetter. But when care and trouble, and leather bags, and golden guineas, and black broad- cloth, came upon him, he thought high time to shift a portion of the burthen of his existence upon some other shoulders. I must now apprise the reader, that although my hero had never thought of marriage, it was only because he was too single-minded to think of two things at once. He had not reached the mature age of one and twenty, untouched by the arrows of the gentle god. In love he had been, and at the precise point of time to which we have brought this veracious history, the tender passion was blazing in his bosom, as kindly and as cheerfully as a christmas fire. Its object was a beautiful girl of nineteen, who really did great credit to the taste of the enamoured musician. She was the daughter of a widow lady of respectable connexions, but decayed fortune-the damaged relic of a fashionable spendthrift. Lucy Atherton, the young lady in question, had beauty enough to compensate for the absence of wealth, and a sufficient portion of the family inheritance of pride, to enable her to hold her head quite as high as any belle in the village. Indeed she made it a point to take precedence wherever she went, and as she did this without the least appearance of ill nature, and without displaying any self-important airs, but rather as a matter of course, it seemed to be universally conceded to her. She was the reigning beauty of the village-the prettiest, the gayest, and the most graceful ofthe maiden train who danced to the music of Johnny Anson's violin. In the dance she was grace personified. It was a treat to behold her laughing face, her lovely form, and her light step, as she flew with joyous heart and noiseless foot through the mazes of the contra-dance. Now it happened to Johnny occasionally, to shut his mouth and open his eyes, just at the dangerous moment when Miss Atherton was engaged in these captivating performances, and he must have been the most churlish of all Yorkshiremen, not to have been fascinated. She was in the habit too of leading off the sets, and the choice of the air was generally dictated by her taste. On such occasions she would address our hero with the most winning grace,