4
Samh 8.20.1339 15:00
No matter how much Pethany tried to get Amoranda to limit the number of men visiting the house each day, Amoranda refused. One day, one of the men, Mr. Froch, managed to follow her into the greenhouse in the garden.
“Madam,” he said, “I told you I had a mind to marry you six weeks ago. If you continue to keep me in suspense, it will break my heart. I am not unaware of or unthankful for the favors you have shown to me. I know that out of all your suitors, I am the man who stands highest in your esteem. Every time your eyes lock with mine, they declare that I, alone, have won you heart. Why haven’t you accepted my offer and, by ignoring it, prevented my happiness?”
“Did they teach you mind-reading in school?” Amoranda asked. “What makes you so sure of what I think? How can you be so silly as to think that I would even consider marrying anyone when I still have my youth upon my cheeks? No, Mr. Froch, there will be time enough for me to be a wife when those dreadful things—decay and old age—get ahold of me. But if it is any satisfaction to you, I rate you at the same value as the rest of the men who visit me.”
“Amoranda, I would only be satisfied if you had said you rate me higher than the others.”
“Oh, I think I said enough, but I won’t tolerate it if you lose hope.” At that moment, she saw another one of her admirers, Mr. Galeid, coming up the path. He was more melancholy than Mr. Froch, and she decided to switch her attentions to him.
“Mr. Froch, will you go pick me some nectarngos?” She asked, and Mr. Froch went off to do as she bid him.
“Madam,” Mr. Galeid said as soon as he met her, “I am far from coming to repeat my presumptive love. Instead, I have come in the highest despair to resign it. I am too sensible to how little I deserve for you to return any of my feelings, and since my estate is too small for you—”
“Your estate? Your estate is trifling compared to your merits,” Amoranda gushed. “I have good taste so I set the highest value upon the richest gem, and I am sorry my behavior has given you despairing thoughts.”
“Amoranda, I have no cause to complain of your behavior, but hope is a tiresome thing when it hangs too low upon our hands. Here comes one that has taken my place.”
“Believe me, you have made a mistake. You are as high in my esteem as he is,” she smiled at him.
Mr. Froch returned with the fruit and complained of the heat. The three of them took a walk together by the pond, and as they were doing so, someone flew by her property on a solocraft and tossed a glove at her feet. She picked it up and discovered something was in it. Although this surprised her, she concealed the whole in her pocket quickly.
Then she saw Colonel Kieron approaching so she left the other two and went to him.
“I have been kept from my charming Amoranda for an age, it seems! Come, walk with me in your beautiful garden and let me tell you how my absence from you has tortured me since I last saw you.”
Amoranda, slightly leery from what had happened with the message, took him down the most populous path that her robosentinals regularly patrolled. After about fifteen minutes talking about the weather and other mundane things, there was a brief silence in their conversation.
“Why should we spend our time in this garden where so many interruptions may break into our privacy?” Colonel Kieron finally asked quietly. “I want to spend time with you privately where none but my love will be admitted.”
“Kieron,” Amoranda said, “did you ever see a finer waxwing in your life than that one there in the pearange tree? That very waxwing is grandsire to all my little warbling companions inside my greenhouse. I remember him, and I know him because he has a little grey spot over his eye. He is such a charming bird that I have set a cage here as a trap for him a thousand times, but the dear creature is so cunning. Every creature loves liberty and so do I, don’t you?”
“Yes, Madam, I love it, and I always desired it until I knew you. But I am so entangled now in your charms I never expect to disengage myself.”
“Well, that’s a pity. I think a man of your daring should never marry.”
“M-marry?!” he said in great surprise. “No, I hope I shall not ever have so little love for any lady as to marry her. Klepft! The very word has made me sweat. The marriage bed is to love what a cold garden bed is to a melon seed. It starves it to death infallibly.”
“I believe you when you say it does. The problem is that I have often observed once a woman is married nobody cares for her but her husband. If your lordship’s remarks are true, then her husband does not care for her either. Therefore, I think that everyone must live single in their own defense. But, Kieron—”
“Listen, Amoranda, I can’t live with this trifling with my passion. Either ease my suffering or take my life.”
“Honestly, you are such a charismatic man that I have broken the rules of good manners because I was so drawn into your speech,” Amoranda tried to change the subject. “Look, I left poor Mr. Froch and Mr. Galeid in the greenhouse almost two hours ago when we took off on this walk, and I quite forgot they were still there.”
“Forget those toads,” Kieron said, irritated. “Are they really a subject fit for your thoughts? See, they must have left without asking your permission!” He pointed to the empty greenhouse.
Kieron was very ruffled, but Amoranda was at a loss as to why he was getting so upset, yet again. She had tried to be nice to him, but she did not like all the pressure he kept putting on her. He wanted to direct her this way and that way but had no desire, apparently, to become her husband. It was all very confusing.
“I must go,” he said finally breaking her silence. As he left, she felt nothing but relief.
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