“Why, here we are all to rights again!” exclaimed a sweet voice, behind.—“Thank you for your assistance, gentlemen.—My dear Mr. Bullfrog, how you perspire! Do let me wipe your face.—Don’t take this little accident too much to heart, good driver. We ought to be thankful that none of our necks are broken!”

“We might have spared one neck out of the three,” muttered the driver, rubbing his ear and pulling his nose, to ascertain whether he had been cuffed or not. “Why, the woman’s a witch!”

I fear that the reader will not believe, yet it is positively a fact, that there stood Mrs. Bullfrog with her glossy ringlets, curling on her brow and two rows of Orient pearls gleaming between her parted lips, which wore a most angelic smile. She had regained her riding-habit and calash from the grisly phantom, and was in all respects the lovely woman who had been sitting by my side at the instant of our overturn. How she had happened to disappear, and who had supplied her place, and whence she did now return, were problems too knotty for me to solve. There stood my wife: that was the one thing certain among a heap of mysteries. Nothing remained but to help her into the coach and plod on through the journey of the day and the journey of life as comfortably as we could. As the driver closed the door upon us I heard him whisper to the three countrymen.

“How do you suppose a fellow feels shut up in the case with a she-tiger?”

Of course this query could have no reference to my situation; yet, unreasonable as it may appear, I confess that my feelings were not altogether so ecstatic as when I first called Mrs. Bullfrog mine. True, she was a sweet woman and an angel of a wife; but what if a gorgon should return amid the transports of our connubial bliss and take the angel’s place! I recollected the tale of a fairy who half the time was a beautiful woman and half the time a hideous monster. Had I taken that very fairy to be the wife of my bosom? While such whims and chimeras were flitting across my fancy I began to look askance at Mrs. Bullfrog, almost expecting that the transformation would be wrought before my eyes.

To divert my mind I took up the newspaper which had covered the little basket of refreshments, and which now lay at the bottom of the coach blushing with a deep-red stain and emitting a potent spirituous fume from the contents of the broken bottle of Kalydor. The paper was two or three years old, but contained an article of several columns in which I soon grew wonderfully interested. It was the report of a trial for breach of promise of marriage, giving the testimony in full, with fervid extracts from both the gentleman’s and lady’s amatory correspondence. The deserted damsel had personally appeared in court, and had borne energetic evidence to her lover’s perfidy and the strength of her blighted affections. On the defendant’s part, there had been an attempt, though insufficiently sustained, to blast the plaintiff’s character, and a plea, in mitigation of damages, on account of her unamiable temper. A horrible idea was suggested by the lady’s name.

“Madam,” said I, holding the newspaper before Mrs. Bullfrog’s eyes —and, though a small, delicate and thin-visaged man, I feel assured that I looked very terrific—“Madam,” repeated I, through my shut teeth, “were you the plaintiff in this cause?”

“Oh, my dear Mr. Bullfrog!” replied my wife, sweetly; “I thought all the world knew that.”

“Horror! horror!” exclaimed I, sinking back on the seat.

Covering my face with both hands, I emitted a deep and deathlike groan, as if my tormented soul were rending me asunder. I, the most exquisitely fastidious of men, and whose wife was to have been the most delicate and refined of women, with all the fresh dewdrops glittering on her virgin rosebud of a heart! I thought of the glossy ringlets and pearly teeth, I thought of the Kalydor, I thought of the coachman’s bruised ear and bloody nose, I thought of the tender love-secrets which she had whispered to the judge and jury, and a thousand tittering auditors, and gave another groan.

“Mr. Bullfrog!” said my wife.