



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 <DW29>s, 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