There was nothing very bad about him, excepting his prodigal habits,
and by these he was himself the severest sufferer. Tom, his gardener,
had been married a few weeks, and Gus, who had failed to be at the
wedding, and missed the opportunity of "saluting the bride," took it
into his head that it was both proper and polite that he should do so
on the first occasion of his meeting her subsequently to that
interesting ceremony. Mrs. Mayflower, the other party interested in
the case, differed from him in opinion, and the young landlord kissed
her in spite of herself. But she was not without a champion, for at
the precise moment when Scatterly placed his audacious lips in contact
with the blooming cheek of Mrs. M., Tom entered the garden and beheld
the outrage.

"What are you doing of, Mr. Scatterly?" he roared.

"O, nothing, Tom, but asserting my rights! I was only saluting the
bride."

"Against my will, Tommy," said the poor bride, blushing like a peony,
and wiping the offended cheek with her checked apron.

"And I'll make you pay dear for it, if there's law in the land," said
Tom.

"Poh, poh! don't make a fool of yourself," said Scatterly.

"I don't mean to," answered the gardener, dryly.

"You're not seriously offended at the innocent liberty I took?"

"Yes I be," said Tom.

"Well, if you view it in that light," answered Scatterly, "I shall
feel bound to make you reparation. You shall have a kiss from my
bride, when I'm married."

"That you never will be."

"I must confess," said Scatterly, laughing, "the prospect of repayment
seems rather distant. But who knows what will happen? I may not die a
bachelor, after all. And if I marry--I repeat it, my dear fellow--you
shall have a kiss from my wife."

"No he shan't," said Phebe. "He shall kiss nobody but me."

"Yes he shall," said Scatterly. "Have you got pen, ink, and paper,
Tom?"

"To be sure," answered the gardener. "Here they be, all handy."

Scatterly sat down and wrote as follows:--

"THE WILLOWS, August --, 18--.

"Value received, I promise to pay Thomas Mayflower or order,
one kiss on demand.

"AUGUSTUS SCATTERLY."

"There you have a legal document," said the young man, as he handed
the paper to the grinning gardener. "And now, good folks, good by."

"Mistakes will happen in the best regulated families," and so it
chanced that, in the autumn of the same year, our bachelor met at the
Springs a charming belle of Baltimore