The Squire a Biographical Sketch Author:Squire General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1861 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: CHAP. IV. Dr. Baillie again. -- His Courtship of my younger Aunt ends in his marrying my elder. As the rector, at the time which I speak of, was considered as the great man of the parish after the squire, I shall give due importance to Dr. Baillie, whom we have seen regaled in the preceding chapter, by bringing him again on the carpet. He was a bachelor, and a thorough Oxford don in his habits and accomplishments, who lived with a maiden aunt, who was in fact his housekeeper. She was a good cook, but I believe not so good as her nephew, who often descended into the kitchen to assist her in preparing some dainty dish for his dinner. Cookery, now that he had put by Oxford learning (it having served his turn), had become one of his principal studies. He never rode, exceptin his carriage, walked as seldom as possible, and his most active pastime was that of sawing his right arm to and fro across the strings of a huge unwieldy bass viol. The Eev. Doctor had lately been casting his eyes about for a Mrs. Baillie, and had now began to settle them on my aunt Maria, but was rather at a loss how to commence the courtship, for he had scarce ever been in ladies' society at Oxford, and in very little but that of his aunt Margery's since. Talking with her as if in joke, one day, on the subject: " Suppose now, Margery, I was to tread on her toe, what d'ye think she would say ? " " Well," said Margery, " of the numbers, more than I can reckon up, who have been bold enough to pop the question to me, no one ever began in that manner, and she seems to me to be a haughty kind of a body, that might not quite relish suc...« less