The Project Gutenberg EBook of Frivolous Cupid, by Anthony Hope

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Title: Frivolous Cupid

Author: Anthony Hope

Posting Date: August 30, 2008 [EBook #428]
Release Date: February, 1996

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRIVOLOUS CUPID ***

Produced by Charles Keller. HTML version by Al Haines.

FRIVOLOUS CUPID

BY

SIR ANTHONY HOPE HAWKINS

(ANTHONY HOPE, PSEUD.)

Cupid, I met thee yesterday
With an empty quiver,
Coming from Clarinda's house
By the reedy river.

And I saw Clarinda stand
Near the pansies, weeping,
With her hands upon her breast
All thine arrows keeping.

CONTENTS

I. RELUCTANCE
II. WHY MEN DON'T MARRY
III. A CHANGE OF HEART
IV. A REPENTANT SINNER
V. 'TWIXT WILL AND WILL NOT
VI. WHICH SHALL IT BE?
VII. MARRIAGE BY COMPULSION
VIII. ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

FRIVOLOUS CUPID.

I.

RELUCTANCE.

I.

Neither life nor the lawn-tennis club was so full at Natterley that the
news of Harry Sterling's return had not some importance.

He came back, moreover, to assume a position very different from his
old one. He had left Harrow now, departing in the sweet aroma of a
long score against Eton at Lord's, and was to go up to Oxford in
October. Now between a schoolboy and a University man there is a gulf,
indicated unmistakably by the cigarette which adorned Harry's mouth as
he walked down the street with a newly acquiescent father, and
thoroughly realized by his old playmates. The young men greeted him as
an equal, the boys grudgingly accepted his superiority, and the girls
received him much as though they had never met him before in their
lives and were pressingly in need of an introduction. These features
of his reappearance amused Mrs. Mortimer; she recollected him as an
untidy, shy, pretty boy; but mind, working on matter, had so
transformed him that she was doubtful enough about him to ask her
husband if that were really Harry Sterling.

Mr. Mortimer, mopping his bald head after one of his energetic failures
at lawn tennis, grunted assent, and remarked that a few