In several instances the
bosom friend turned out to be the bosom friend of more than one of
them. The bosom friends began to take a hand in it. Some of them
came to him with quite a little list, insisting--playfully at first--
on his making up his mind what he was going to take and what he was
going to leave; offering, as reward for prompt decision, to make
things as easy for him as possible with the remainder of the column.
It was then he saw that his good intentions were likely to end in
catastrophe. He would not tell the truth: that the whole scheme had
been conceived out of charity towards all ill-constructed or
dilapidated ladies; that personally he didn't care a hang for any of
them; had only taken them on, vulgarly speaking, to give them a
treat, and because nobody else would. That wasn't going to be a
golden memory, colouring their otherwise drab existence. He
explained that it was not love--not the love that alone would justify
a man's asking of a woman that she should give herself to him for
life--that he felt and always should feel for them, but merely
admiration and deep esteem; and seventeen of them thought that would
be sufficient to start with, and offered to chance the rest.
The truth had to come out. Friends who knew his noble nature could
not sit by and hear him denounced as a heartless and eccentric
profligate. Ladies whose beauty and popularity were beyond dispute
thought it a touching and tender thing for him to have done; but
every woman to whom he had ever addressed a kind word wanted to wring
his neck.
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