University of Virginia Library

10. CHAPTER X.

There they sat, those four young creatures, a perfect
galaxy of bright and beaming eyes. There was not a plain
face among them; and I was struck with the circumstance
of how rare it was to meet with a youthful and positively
ugly American female. Kitty, too, was at the door by the
time we reached the carriage, and she also was a blooming
and attractive-looking girl. It was a thousand pities that
she spoke, however; the vulgarity of her utterance, tone
of voice, cadences, and accent, the latter a sort of singing
whine, being in striking contrast to a sort of healthful and
vigorous delicacy that marked her appearance. All the

[OMITTED] which had been the pencil in question, and which he had
dropped into the box but a moment before it was sold.

“Wa-a-l, Madam Littlepage,” cried Miller, who used the
familiarity of one born on the estate, “this is the queerest
watch-pedlar I 've met with, yet. He asks fifteen dollars
for that pencil, and only four for this watch!” showing his
own purchase as he concluded.

My grandmother took the watch in her hand, and examined
it attentively.

“It strikes me as singularly cheap!” she remarked,
glancing a little distrustfully, as I fancied, at her son, as if
she thought he might he selling his brushes cheaper than
those who only stole the materials, because he stole them
ready made. “I know that these watches are made for
very little in the cheap countries of Europe, but one can
hardly see how this machinery was put together for so small
a sum.”

“I has 'em, matam, at all brices,” put in my uncle.

“I have a strong desire to purchase a good lady's watch,
but should a little fear buying of any but a known and regular
dealer.”

“You needn't fear us, ma'am,” I ventured to say. “If
we might sheat anypodies, we shouldn't sheat so goot a
laty.”

“I do not know whether my voice struck Patt's ear pleasantly,
or a wish to see the project of her grandmother car
ried out at once, induced my sister to interfere; but interfere
she did, and that by urging her aged parent to put
confidence in us. Years had taught my grandmother caution,
and she hesitated.

“But all these watches are of base metal, and I want one
of good gold and handsome finish,” observed my grand
mother.

My uncle immediately produced a watch that he had
bought of Blondel, in Paris, for five hundred francs, and
which was a beautiful little ornament for a lady's belt. He
gave it to my grandmother, who read the name of the manufacturer
with some little surprise. The watch itself was
then examined attentively, and was applauded by all.

“And what may be the price of this?” demanded my
grandmother.

“One hoondred dollars, matam; and sheaps at dat.”

Tom Miller looked at the bit of tinsel in his own hand,
and at the smaller, but exquisitely-shaped “article” that my
grandmother held up to look at, suspended by its bit of ribbon,
and was quite as much puzzled as he had evidently
been a little while before, in his distinctions between the
rich and the poor. Tom was not able to distinguish the
base from the true; that was all.

My grandmother did not appear at all alarmed at the
price, though she cast another distrustful glance or two, over
her spectacles, at the imaginary pedlar. At length the beauty
of the watch overcame her.

“If you will bring this watch to yonder large dwelling, I
will pay you the hundred dollars for it,” she said; “I have
not as much money with me here.”

“Ja, ja—ferry goot; you might keep das vatch, laty, und
I will coome for der money after I haf got some dinners of
somebodys.”

My grandmother had no scruple about accepting of the
credit, of course, and she was about to put the watch in her
pocket, when Patt laid her little gloved hand on it, and cried—

“Now, dearest grandmother, let it be done at once—
there is no one but us three present, you know!”

“Such is the impatience of a child!” exclaimed the elder
lady, laughing. “Well, you shall be indulged. I gave
you that pencil for a keep-sake, Mary, only en attendant,
it having been my intention to offer a watch, as soon as a
suitable one could be found, as a memorial of the sense I
entertain of the spirit you showed during that dark week in
which the anti-renters were so menacing. Here, then, is
such a watch as I might presume to ask you to have the
goodness to accept.”

Mary Warren seemed astounded! The colour mounted
to her temples; then she became suddenly pale. I had
never seen so pretty a picture of gentle female distress — a
distress that arose from conflicting, but creditable feelings.

“Oh! Mrs. Littlepage!” she exclaimed, after looking in
astonishment at the offering for a moment, and in silence.
“You cannot have intended that beautiful watch for me!”

“For you, my dear; the beautiful watch is not a whit
too good for my beautiful Mary.”

“But, dear, dear Mrs. Littlepage, it is altogether too
handsome for my station — for my means.”

“A lady can very well wear such a watch; and you are
a lady in every sense of the word, and so you need have
no scruples on that account. As for the means, you will
not misunderstand me if I remind you that it will be
bought with my means, and there can be no extravagance
in the purchase.”

“But we are so poor, and that watch has so rich an appearance!
It scarcely seems right.”

“I respect your feelings and sentiments, my dear girl,
and can appreciate them. I suppose you know I was once
as poor, nay, much poorer than you are, yourself.”

“You, Mrs. Littlepage! No, that can hardly be. You
are of an affluent and very respectable family, I know.”

“It is quite true, nevertheless, my dear. I shall not affect
extreme humility, and deny that the Malbones did and
do belong to the gentry of the land, but my brother and
myself were once so much reduced as to toil with the surveyors,
in the woods, quite near this property. We had
then no claim superior to yours, and in many respects were
reduced much lower. Besides, the daughter of an educated
and well-connected clergyman has claims that, in a worldly
point of view alone, entitle her to a certain consideration.
You will do me the favour to accept my offering?”

“Dear Mrs. Littlepage! I do not know how to refuse
you, or how to accept so rich a gift! You will let me consult
my father, first?”

“That will be no more than proper, my dear,” returned
my beloved grandmother, quietly putting the watch into her
own pocket; “Mr. Warren, luckily, dines with us, and the
matter can be settled before we sit down to table.”

This ended the discussion, which had commenced under
an impulse of feeling that left us all its auditors. As for
my uncle and myself, it is scarcely necessary to say we
were delighted with the little scene. The benevolent wish
to gratify, on the one side, with the natural scruples on the
other, about receiving, made a perfect picture for our contemplation.
The three girls, who were witnesses of what
passed, too much respected Mary's feelings to interfere,
though Patt restrained herself with difficulty. As to Tom

Miller and Kitty, they doubtless wondered why “Warren's
gal” was such a fool as to hesitate about accepting a watch
that was worth a hundred dollars. This was another point
they did not understand.

“You spoke of dinner,” continued my grandmother, looking
at my uncle. “If you and your companion will follow
us to the house, I will pay you for the watch, and order you
a dinner in the bargain.”

We were right down glad to accept this offer, making our
bows and expressing our thanks, as the carriage whirled
off. We remained a moment, to take our leave of Miller.

“When you 've got through at the Nest,” said that semi-worthy
fellow, “give us another call here. I should like
my woman and Kitty to have a look at your finery, before
you go down to the village with it.”

With a promise to return to the farm-house, we proceeded
on our way to the building which, in the familiar parlance
of the country, was called the Nest, or the Nest House,
from Ravensnest, its true name, and which Tom Miller, in
his country dialect, called the “Neest.” The distance between
the two buildings was less than half a mile, the
grounds of the family residence lying partly between them.
Many persons would have called the extensive lawns which
surrounded my paternal abode a park, but it never bore that
name with us. They were too large for a paddock, and
might very well have come under the former appellation;
but, as deer, or animals of any sort, except those that are
domestic, had never been kept within it, the name had not
been used. We called them the grounds — a term which
applies equally to large and small enclosures of this nature
— while the broad expanse of verdure which lies directly
under the windows goes by the name of the lawn. Notwithstanding
the cheapness of land among us, there has
been very little progress made in the art of landscape gardening;
and if we have anything like park scenery, it is
far more owing to the gifts of a bountiful nature than to any
of the suggestions of art. Thanks to the cultivated taste of
Downing, as well as to his well-directed labours, this reproach
is likely to be soon removed, and country life will
acquire this pleasure, among the many others that are so
peculiarly its own. After lying for more than twenty years

— a stigma on the national taste — disfigured by ravines or
gullies, and otherwise in a rude and discreditable condition,
the grounds of the White House have been brought into a
condition to denote that they are the property of a civilized
country. The Americans are as apt at imitation as the
Chinese, with a far greater disposition to admit of change;
and little beyond good models are required to set them on
the right track. But it is certain that, as a nation, we have
yet to acquire nearly all that belongs to the art I have mentioned
that lies beyond avenues of trees, with an occasional
tuft of shrubbery. The abundance of the latter, that forms
the wilderness of sweets, the masses of flowers that spot the
surface of Europe, the beauty of curved lines, and the whole
finesse of surprises, reliefs, back-grounds and vistas, are
things so little known among us as to be almost “arisdogratic,”
as my uncle Ro would call the word.

Little else had been done at Ravensnest than to profit by
the native growth of the trees, and to take advantage of the
favourable circumstances in the formation of the grounds.
Most travellers imagine that it might be an easy thing to
lay out a park in the virgin forest, as the axe might spare
the thickets, and copses, and woods, that elsewhere are the
fruits of time and planting. This is all a mistake, however,
as the rule; though modified exceptions may and do
exist. The tree of the American forest shoots upward toward
the light, growing so tall and slender as to be unsightly;
and even when time has given its trunk a due size,
the top is rarely of a breadth to ornament a park or a lawn,
while its roots, seeking their nourishment in the rich alluvium
formed by the decaved leaves of a thousand years, lie
too near the surface to afford sufficient support after losing
the shelter of its neighbours. It is owing to reasons like
these that the ornamental grounds of an American country-house
have usually to be commenced ab origine, and that
natural causes so little aid in finishing them.

My predecessors had done a little towards assisting nature,
at the Nest, and what was of almost equal importance,
in the state of knowledge on this subject as it existed in the
country sixty years since, they had done little to mar her
efforts. The results were, that the grounds of Ravensnest
possess a breadth that is the fruit of the breadth of our lands,

and a rural beauty which, without being much aided by art,
was still attractive. The herbage was kept short by sheep,
of which one thousand, of the fine wool, were feeding on
the lawns, along the slopes, and particularly on the distant
heights, as we crossed the grounds on our way to the doors.

The Nest House was a respectable New York country
dwelling, as such buildings were constructed among us in
the last quarter of the past century, a little improved and
enlarged by the second and third generations of its owners.
The material was of stone, the low cliff on which it stood
supplying enough of an excellent quality; and the shape of
the main corps de batiment as near a square as might be.
Each face of this part of the constructions offered five windows
to view, this being almost the prescribed number for
a country residence in that day, as three have since got to
be in towns. These windows, however, had some size, the
main building being just sixty feet square, which was about
ten feet in each direction larger than was common so soon
after the revolution. But wings had been added to the original
building, and that on a plan which conformed to the
shape of a structure in square logs, that had been its predecessor
on its immediate site. These wings were only of a
story and a half each, and doubling on each side of the main
edifice just far enough to form a sufficient communication,
they ran back to the very verge of a cliff some forty feet in
height, overlooking, at their respective ends, a meandering
rivulet, and a wide expanse of very productive flats, that
annually filled my barns with hay and my cribs with corn.
Of this level and fertile bottom-land there was near a thousand
acres, stretching in three directions, of which two hundred
belonged to what was called the Nest Farm. The
remainder was divided among the farms of the adjacent tenantry.
This little circumstance, among the thousand-and-one
other atrocities that were charged upon me, had been
made a ground of accusation, to which I shall presently have
occasion to advert. I shall do this the more readily, because
the fact has not yet reached the ears and set in motion the
tongues of legislators — Heaven bless us, how words do get
corrupted by too much use! — in their enumeration of the
griefs of the tenants of the State.

Everything about the Nest was kept in perfect order, and

in a condition to do credit to the energy and taste of my
grandmother, who had ordered all these things for the last
few years, or since the death of my grandfather. This circumstance,
connected with the fact that the building was
larger and more costly than those of most of the other citizens
of the country, had, of late years, caused Ravensnest
to be termed an “aristocratic residence.” This word “aristocratic,”
I find since my return home, has got to be a term
of expansive signification, its meaning depending on the
particular habits and opinions of the person who happens to
use it. Thus, he who chews tobacco thinks it aristocratic
in him who deems the practice nasty not to do the same;
the man who stoops accuses him who is straight in the back
of having aristocratic shoulders; and I have actually met
with one individual who maintained that it was excessively
aristocratic to pretend not to blow one's nose with his fingers.
It will soon be aristocratic to maintain the truth of
the familiar Latin axiom of “de gustibus non disputandum
est.”

As we approached the door of the Nest House, which
opened on the piazza that stretched along three sides of the
main building, and the outer ends of both wings, the coachman
was walking his horses away from it, on the road that
led to the stables. The party of ladies had made a considerable
circuit after quitting the farm, and had arrived but
a minute before us. All the girls but Mary Warren had
entered the house, careless on the subject of the approach
of two pedlars; she remained, however, at the side of my
grandmother, to receive us.

“I believe in my soul,” whispered uncle Ro, “that my
dear old mother has a seeret presentiment who we are, by
her manifesting so much respect.—T'ousand t'anks, matam,
t'ousand t'anks,” he continued, dropping into his half-accurate
half-blundering broken English, “for dis great honour,
such as we might not expect das laty of das house to wait
for us at her door.”

“This young lady tells me that she has seen you before,
and that she understands you are both persons of education
and good manners, who have been driven from your native
country by political troubles. Such being the case, I cannot
regard you as common pedlars. I have known what it

was to be reduced in fortune,” — my dear grandmother's
voice trembled a little — “and can feel for those who thus
suffer.”

“Matam, dere might be moch trut' in some of dis,” answered
my uncle, taking off his cap, and bowing very much
like a gentleman, an act in which I imitated him immediately.
“We haf seen petter tays; und my son, dere, hast
peen edicatet at an university. But we are now poor pedlars
of vatches, und dem dat might make moosic in der
streets.”

My grandmother looked as a lady would look under such
circumstances, neither too free to forget present appearances,
nor coldly neglectful of the past. She knew that something
was due to her own household, and to the example she ought
to set it, while she felt that far more was due to the sentiment
that unites the cultivated. We were asked into the
house, were told a table was preparing for us, and were
treated with a generous and considerate hospitality that involved
no descent from her own character, or that of the
sex; the last being committed to the keeping of every lady.

In the mean time, business proceeded with my uncle. He
was paid his hundred dollars; and all his stores of value,
including rings, brooches, ear rings, chains, bracelets, and
other trinkets that he had intended as presents to his wards,
were produced from his pockets, and laid before the bright
eyes of the three girls — Mary Warren keeping in the back
ground, as one who ought not to look on things unsuited to
her fortune. Her father had arrived, however, had been
consulted, and the pretty watch was already attached to the
girdle of the prettier waist. I fancied the tear of gratitude
that still floated in her serene eyes was a jewel of far higher
price than any my uncle could exhibit.

We had been shown into the library, a room that was in
the front of the house, and of which the windows all opened
on the piazza. I was at first a little overcome, at thus finding
myself, and unrecognized, under the paternal roof, and in
a dwelling that was my own, after so many years of absence.
Shall I confess it! Everything appeared diminutive
and mean, after the buildings to which I had been accustomed
in the old world. I am not now drawing comparisons
with the palaces of princes, and the abodes of the

great, as the American is apt to fancy, whenever anything
is named that is superior to the things to which he is accustomed;
but to the style, dwellings, and appliances of domestic
life that pertain to those of other countries who have not
a claim in anything to be accounted my superiors—scarcely
my equals. In a word, American aristocracy, or that which
it is getting to be the fashion to stigmatize as aristocratic,
would be deemed very democratic in most of the nations of
Europe. Our Swiss brethren have their chateaux and their
habits that are a hundred times more aristocratic than anything
about Ravensnest, without giving offence to liberty;
and I feel persuaded, were the proudest establishment in all
America pointed out to a European as an aristocratic abode,
he would be very apt to laugh at it, in his sleeve. The secret
of this charge among ourselves is the innate dislike
which is growing up in the country to see any man distinguished
from the mass around him in anything, even though
it should be in merit. It is nothing but the expansion of
the principle which gave rise to the traditionary feud between
the “plebeians and patricians” of Albany, at the
commencement of this century, and which has now descended
so much farther than was then contemplated by the
soi-disant “plebeians” of that day, as to become quite disagreeable
to their own descendants. But to return to myself
—

I will own that, so far from finding any grounds of exultation
in my own aristocratical splendour, when I came
to view my possessions at home, I felt mortified and disappointed.
The things that I had fancied really respectable,
and even fine, from recollection, now appeared very common-place,
and in many particulars mean. “Really,” I
found myself saying sotto voce, “all this is scarcely worthy
of being the cause of deserting the right, setting sound principles
at defiance, and of forgetting God and his commandments!”
Perhaps I was too inexperienced to comprehend
how capacious is the maw of the covetous man, and how
microscopic the eye of envy.

“You are welcome to Ravensnest,” said Mr. Warren,
approaching and offering his hand in a friendly way, much
as he would address any other young friend; “we arrived
a little before you, and I have had my ears and eyes open

ever since, in the hope of hearing your flute, and of seeing
your form in the highway, near the parsonage, where you
promised to visit me.”

Mary was standing at her father's elbow, as when I first
saw her, and she gazed wistfully at my flute, as she would
not have done had she seen me in my proper attire, assuming
my proper character.

“I danks you, sir,” was my answer. “We might haf
plenty of times for a little moosic, vhen das laties shall be
pleaset to say so. I canst blay Yankee Doodle, Hail Coloombias,
and der `Star Spangled Banner,' und all dem airs,
as dey so moch likes at der taverns and on der road.”

Mr. Warren laughed, and he took the flute from my hand,
and began to examine it. I now trembled for the incognito!
The instrument had been mine for many years, and was a
very capital one, with silver keys, stops, and ornaments.
What if Patt — what if my dear grandmother should recognise
it! I would have given the handsomest trinket in my
uncle's collection to get the flute back again into my own
hands; but, before on opportunity offered for that, it went
from band to hand, as the instrument that had produced the
charming sounds heard that morning, until it reached those
of Martha. The dear girl was thinking of the jewelry,
which, it will be remembered, was rich, and intended in
part for herself, and she passed the instrument on, saying,
hurriedly,—

“See, dear grandmother, this is the flute which you pronounced
the sweetest toned of any you had ever heard!”

My grandmother took the flute, started, put her spectacles
closer to her eyes, examined the instrument, turned pale —
for her cheeks still retained a little of the colour of their
youth — and then cast a glance hurriedly and anxiously at
me. I could see that she was pondering on something profoundly
in her most secret mind, for a minute or two.
Luckily the others were too much occupied with the box of
the pedlar to heed her movements. She walked slowly out
of the door, almost brushing me as she passed, and went
into the hall. Here she turned, and, catching my eye, she
signed for me to join her. Obeying this signal, I followed,
until I was led into a little room, in one of the wings, that I
well remembered as a sort of private parlour attached to my

grandmother's own bed-room. To call it a boudoir would
be to caricature things, its furniture being just that of the
sort of room I have mentioned, or of a plain, neat, comfortable,
country parlour. Here my grandmother took her seat
on a sofa, for she trembled so she could not stand, and then
she turned to gaze at me wistfully, and with an anxiety it
would be difficult for me to describe.

“Do not keep me in suspense!” she said, almost awfully
in tone and manner, “am I right in my conjecture?”

“Dearest grandmother, you are!” I answered, in my natural
voice.

No more was needed: we hung on each other's necks, as
had been my wont in boyhood.

“But who is that pedlar, Hugh?” demanded my grandmother,
after a time. “Can it possibly be Roger, my son?”

“It is no other; we have come to visit you, incog.”

“And why this disguise? — Is it connected with the troubles?”

“Certainly; we have wished to take a near view with
our own eyes, and supposed it might be unwise to come
openly, in our proper characters.”

“In this you have done well; yet I hardly know how to
welcome you, in your present characters. On no account
must your real names be revealed. The demons of tar and
feathers, the sons of liberty and equality, who illustrate their
principles as they do their courage, by attacking the few
with the many, would be stirring, fancying themselves heroes
and martyrs in the cause of justice, did they learn you
were here. Ten armed and resolute men might drive a
hundred of them, I do believe; for they have all the cowardice
of thieves, but they are heroes with the unarmed and
feeble. Are you safe, yourselves, appearing thus disguised,
under the new law?”

“We are not armed, not having so much as a pistol; and
that will protect us.”

“I am sorry to say, Hugh, that this country is no longer
what I once knew it. Its justice, if not wholly departed, is
taking to itself wings, and its blindness, not in a disregard
of persons, but in a faculty of seeing only the stronger side.
A landlord, in my opinion, would have but little hope, with
jury, judge, or executive, for doing that which thousands

of the tenants have done, still do, and will continue to do,
with perfect impunity, unless some dire catastrophe stimulates
the public functionaries to their duties, by awakening
public indignation.”

“This is a miserable state of things, dearest grandmother;
and what makes it worse, is the cool indifference with which
most persons regard it. A better illustration of the utter
selfishness of human nature cannot be given, than in the
manner in which the body of the people look on, and see
wrong thus done to a few of their number.”

“Such persons as Mr. Seneca Newcome would answer,
that the public sympathises with the poor, who are oppressed
by the rich, because the last do not wish to let the first rob
them of their estates! We hear a great deal of the strong
robbing the weak, all over the world, but few among ourselves,
I am afraid, are sufficiently clear-sighted to see how
vivid an instance of the truth now exists among ourselves.”

“Calling the tenants the strong, and the landlords the
weak?”

“Certainly; numbers make strength, in this country, in
which all power in practice, and most of it in theory, rests
with the majority. Were there as many landlords as there
are tenants, my life on it, no one would see the least injustice
in the present state of things.”

“So says my uncle: but I hear the light steps of the
girls — we must be on our guard.”

At that instant Martha entered, followed by all three of
the girls, holding in her hand a very beautiful Manilla chain
that my uncle had picked up in his travels, and had purchased
as a present to my future wife, whomsoever she
might turn out to be, and which he had had the indiscretion
to show to his ward. A look of surprise was cast by each
girl in succession, as she entered the room, on me, but neither
said, and I fancy neither thought much of my being
shut up there with an old lady of eighty, after the first moment.
Other thoughts were uppermost at the moment.

“Look at this, dearest grandmamma!” cried Patt, holding
up the chain as she entered the room. “Here is just the
most exquisite chain that was ever wrought, and of the
purest gold; but the pedlar refuses to part with it!”

“Perhaps you do not offer enough, my child; it is, indeed,

very, very beautiful; pray what does he say is its
value?”

“One hundred dollars, he says; and I can readily believe
it, for its weight is near half the money. I do wish
Hugh were at home; I am certain he would contrive to get
it, and make it a present to me!”

“Nein, nein, young lady,” put in the pedlar, who, a little
unceremoniously, had followed the girls into the room, though
he knew, of course, precisely where he was coming; “dat
might not be. Dat chain is der broperty of my son, t'ere,
und I haf sworn it shalt only be gifen to his wife.”

Pat coloured a little, and she pouted a good deal; then
she laughed outright.

“If it is only to be had on those conditions, I am afraid I
shall never own it,” she said, saucily, though it was intended
to be uttered so low as not to reach my ears. “I
will pay the hundred dollars out of my own pocket-money,
however, if that will buy it. Do say a good word for me,
grandmamma!”

How prettily the hussy uttered that word of endearment,
so different from the “paw” and “maw” one hears among
the dirty-noses that are to be found in the mud-puddles!
But our grand parent was puzzled, for she knew with whom
she had to deal, and of course saw that money would do
nothing. Nevertheless, the state of the game rendered it
necessary to say and do something that might have an appearance
of complying with Patty's request.

“Can I have more success in persuading you to change
your mind, sir?” she said, looking at her son in a way that
let him know at once, or at least made him suspect at once,
that she was in his secret. “It would give me great pleasure
to be able to gratify my grand-daughter, by making
her a present of so beautiful a chain.”

My uncle Ro advanced to his mother, took the hand she
had extended with the chain in it, in order the better to admire
the trinket, and he kissed it with a profound respect,
but in such a manner as to make it seem to the lookers-on
an act of European usage, rather than what it was, the tempered
salute of a child to his parent.

“Laty,” he then said, with emphasis, “if anybody might
make me change a resolution long since made, it would be

one as fenerable, und gracious, und goot as I am sartain
you most be. But I haf vowet to gif dat chain to das wife
of mine son, vhen he might marry, one day, some bretty
young American; und it might not be.”

Dear grandmother smiled; but now she understood that
it was really intended the chain was to be an offering to my
wife, she no longer wished to change its destination. She
examined the bauble a few moments, and said to me —

“Do you wish this, as well as your un — father, I should
say? It is a rich present for a poor man to make.”

“Ja, ja, laty, it ist so; but vhen der heart goes, golt
might be t'ought sheap to go wid it.”

The old lady was half ready to laugh in my face, at hearing
this attempt at Germanic English; but the kindness, and
delight, and benevolent tenderness of her still fine eyes, made
me wish to throw myself in her arms again, and kiss her.
Patt continued to bouder for a moment or two longer, but
her excellent nature soon gave in, and the smiles returned
to her countenance, as the sun issues from behind a cloud
in May.

“Well, the disappointment may and must be borne,” she
said, good-naturedly; “though it is much the most lovely
chain I have ever seen.”

“I dare say the right person will one day find one quite
as lovely to present to you!” said Henrietta Coldbrook, a
little pointedly.

I did not like this speech. It was an allusion that a well-bred
young woman ought not to have made, at least before
others, even pedlars; and it was one that a young woman
of a proper tone of feeling would not be apt to make. I determined
from that instant the chain should never belong to
Miss Henrietta, though she was a fine, showy girl, and
though such a decision would disappoint my uncle sadly. I
was a little surprised to see a slight blush on Patt's cheek,
and then I remembered something of the name of the traveller,
Beekman. Turning towards Mary Warren, I saw
plain enough that she was disappointed because my sister
was disappointed, and for no other reason in the world.

“Your grandmother will meet with another chain, when
she goes to town, that will make you forget this,” she whispered,
affectionately, close at my sister's ear.

Patt smiled, and kissed her friend with a warmth of manner
that satisfied me these two charming young creatures
loved each other sincerely. But my dear old grandmother's
curiosity had been awakened, and she felt a necessity for
having it appeased. She still held the chain, and as she
returned it to me, who happened to be nearest to her, she
said —

“And so, sir, your mind is sincerely made up to offer
this chain to your future wife?”

“Yes, laty; or what might be better, to das yoong frau,
before we might be marriet.”

“And is your choice made?” glancing round at the girls,
who were grouped together, looking at some other trinkets
of my uncle's. “Have you chosen the young woman who
is to possess so handsome a chain?”

“Nein, nein,” I answered, returning the smile, and glancing
also at the group; “dere ist so many peautiful laties in
America, one needn't be in a hurry. In goot time I shalt
find her dat ist intended for me.”

“Well, grandmamma,” interrupted Patt, “since nobody
can have the chain, unless on certain conditions, here are
the three other things that we have chosen for Ann, Henrietta,
and myself, and they are a ring, a pair of bracelets
and a pair of ear-rings. The cost, altogether, will be two
hundred dollars; can you approve of that?”

My grandmother, now she knew who was the pedlar, understood
the whole matter, and had no scruples. The bar
gain was soon made, when she sent us all out of the room,
under the pretence we should disturb her while setting with
the watch-seller. Her real object, however, was to be alone
with her son, not a dollar passing between them, of course.