In Which Horton's Competition Is Enumerated …
Such sad thoughts ran through our kitchen boy's head on the long slog back to Smugwick Manor.
But what of the lovely head of Celia Sylvan-Smythe? What thoughts ran through hers?
I shall not tell you, Reader. Miss Sylvan-Smythe is the only true lady in this story—even if she is just a girl—and I feel we owe her her privacy.
But I can tell you that she still had that nice smile when she picked up her bicycle and rode up the lane.
I can also tell you this.
Celia was too young to marry, but not to be engaged. Already, she had been wooed by no fewer than two dozen men. Stuffed shirts. Pompous popinjays. Greedy, as it were, pigs.
They were really wooing her father's money, and some didn't even try to hide this fact.
Oily, puffy, pasty, and dull, one and all. One was seventy-three years old. One was secretly already married. Most wore this year's fashions but had not read last year's books.
To say that they were slightly better than Luther Luggertuck is to say very little, and to say that Horton Halfpott was better than all of them put together is to state the obvious.
Word of the costume ball leaked out to these two dozen suitors and they quickly found ways to invite themselves.
But would their trip to Smugwick Manor be in vain? Was Celia's heart already taken? I can't say.
She leaned forward and whipped the bicycle up to top speed.
