University of Virginia Library

10. CHAPTER X.
DR. ALLPRICE IN LOVE.

THEY were ready for the Bible class, betimes, for
each had her special reason for wishing to be in
the class that night. Mrs. Fairfax, it might
have been noticed, was in her most girlish and
gay attire, while Margaret was plainly, almost
negligently clad.

“Dear me, what a lovely house, and how happy the
woman will be who becomes mistress there; won't she, my
dear?” remarked Mrs. Fairfax, as they passed the parsonage;
and then she said, “And the bishop's son such a
heavenly-minded man, too! And such table linen and silver

plate, and all! I'm sick of our old house, and things, when
I think of it.” And then she said that she had noticed that
Katherine Lightwait's dresses fairly stood alone, while hers
were as limp as a rag!

“For my part,” answered Margaret, “I like our old
house and old things, too, well enough, and as for my dresses,
I don't mind their being limp, if that were all.”

“Since when, pray?” replied the mother with a sneer,
and little more was said till they reached the meeting-house.

Samuel's place was vacant, at first, but directly Mr.
Stake, the butcher, came in, as large as life, took the seat,
and filled all the aisle with the trailing scent of his marrowfat.
So goes the world, the living dog is still better than
the dead lion.

“O, Margaret, do lend me your Bible!” says Mrs. Fairfax,
nudging her daughter; “I have forgotten mine, and
how will it look?”

Margaret had forgotten hers, too! The evening was
warm, the windows open, and the tallow candles flared
about and dropped their grease on the crape shawls and
newly “done-up” bonnets of the ladies, while the small
black insects that bite so in excess of their size, and the
great, thick-shelled, green-winged bugs that disport themselves
in so lively a manner in the country, of a summer
evening, dashed themselves, now in the lights, now against
the wall, and now in the faces of the assembly. Some of
the most active and gallant of the young gentlemen caught
these curious creatures under their hats, where they buzzed
and thumped about to the great annoyance of the more pious
old ladies, and the infinite amusement of the giddy young
ones. A flock of geese spread their dirty wings, — for they
were used to sail in the muddy ponds about the village —
as from time to time they were assailed by the sticks and
stones of the idle boys, and so ran screaming and gabbling
up and down beneath the windows and about the door, creating
another discord in the harmony of the time; and there
was yet another in the lowing of the kine and the bawling
of the young calves about the neighborhood; and if we add
to these musical performances an occasional interlude from
the cats that mostly congregate in the back yards, and about
the wood-piles, and under the door-steps of village houses,
the orchestra will be pretty complete, that is, if we omit any

mention of the teething babies that were being furiously
rocked to sleep against their will.

There was a good deal of confusion in the house itself, for
the brethren and sisters felt themselves far less restrained
than they would have felt of a Sunday; they were secularized
by the cares and business of the day, and some of them
had even come in work-day clothes, or with only a partial
substitution, of Sunday things, a “clean collar and bosom,”
and a second-best jacket and hat! And these fellows might
be singled out at once, either as being already married, or
as having no intention of going home with the girls.

The confusion of young ladies whispering behind their
fans, of old ones, in one another's bonnets, and of young
fellows under shelter of hands and hats, might, most of it,
perhaps, have been referred to Samuel Dale, in one way or
another, and Margaret felt her heart grow cold and bitter
toward all who smiled as they talked. What business had
they there if they did not come for instruction in sacred
things! She forgot that she had forgotten her own Bible;
and then somehow or other we never any of us quite judge
ourselves with the judgment we award; it happens that our
case is exceptional.

The young fellows snuffed the candles proudly using their
fingers to let the girls see their enthusiasm in their behalf,
while the girls, of the more artful sort, opened their books
to show their indifference, and absorption in higher matters,
for the reader may have observed that anything approaching
to love between the sexes is generally regarded as a low
and shameful thing, all personal responsibility, when the
worst comes to the worst, and the evil unmistakably sets in,
being shifted in some vague way to the “fall,” with the
rest of it. The whispering then ceased, the candles were
snuffed, and the books opened, and all eyes for the most part,
were turned anxiously expectant towards the door, for the
leader of the class, for whom everything waited, had not yet
appeared.

At last when the impatience became extreme, a great
rustling was heard, and then a stately and stern-faced figure
was seen advancing up the aisle, that was at once recognized
as Miss Katherine Lightwait. She bore a huge book in her
hand, and had evidently a huge weight on her soul, for she
seemed as one burdened to the utmost possibility of endurance,

but braced up withal, to undergo the infliction that
was come upon her with a commendable show of Christian
resignation.

“One had better play the hypocrite through all their natural
life,” she said to one who commented on the plainness
of her bonnet, “than be sent to hell for all eternity on
account of worldliness and vanity!” And this remark will
afford the key to her character. Perhaps she felt extreme
rigidness, and the careful observance of all the external
ceremonials to be the more binding upon her, in view of her
brother's shortcomings in these respects; be that as it may,
she was to a common observer a person deeply imbued with
the spirit of personal piety, — so easy is it to confound the
spirit with the letter.

Upon this occasion, having mentioned that the sudden illness
of the pastor prevented him from participating in the
sacred pleasures of the evening, she went to prayer with
sledge-hammer violence, and having crashed through the
customary variety of supplications and invocations, she
came to Samuel, whom she designated both as a madman
and a wolf in sheep's clothing that had lately stolen into their
fold; and then she thanked God for the almost miraculous
preservation from his wicked wiles, of at least one of the
precious lambs of the flock; there was a general groan at
this, and poor Margaret felt as if she were kneeling on stones.
It was as if a bird of the air had carried the matter, for when
the congregation arose, every eye was turned upon her;
one in pity, another curiously, and another in scorn.

When she had pulled through the lesson for the evening,
which she did with a great show of Christian enjoyment, she
prayed again, singing through the long hymn the loudest
of all, and then she came down to poor Margaret, as from a
great height of secure and saintly serenity, and condescended
to give her the tips of her fingers, and to hope that the
Lord was sustaining her in her peculiarly trying affliction.
“Get thee behind me, Satan,” she said, “must be your
constant prayer.” And then she said, “To think the vile
wretch should dare to lift his hand against a bishop's son!”

“But he was crazy, you know,” pleaded Margaret. It
was all one to her, however, crazy or not; he had spoken
some truth of her brother that it was not pleasant to hear,
and she omitted no opportunity, not even in her prayers, of
aggravating the feeling against him.

Her voice was cold and metallic, and her whole manner
so mechanical that she seemed both to speak and to move
by means of some cunning arrangement of springs and wires,
and the rustling of her silk, and the peculiar stiffness of her
eyelids helped to give this seeming, reality.

She appeared to extend these iron eyelids toward one and
another as she greeted them without a smile, and so she
passed stately out of the house, and being joined by her
man who had been seated on a stone, diverting himself with
teasing an ancient gander all this while, she presently disappeared,
leaving Margaret a thousand times more distressed
than before.

Meantime, the young fellows were pairing off with the
girls, and happy couples might be seen by the moonlight,
walking slow and talking low, in every direction. Some few
old women whose extreme homeliness or extreme sanctity,
or both, gave them privileges, took up their outer skirts,
and braving geese and cats and wanton boys, crossed the
common alone; and here and there a worldly-minded husband
walked grimly before his pious wife, carrying a light,
of which there was no need, and speaking never one blessed
word; feeling grieved and vexed and so altogether put upon
that the expectation of getting into heaven at last through
the wife's instrumentality, seemed but slight compensation.

An obscure brother who wore patched trowsers and shoes
that clattered like wooden shoes, they were so hard and
coarse, put out the lights, and locked the door, feeling himself
a good deal honored thereby; and so the old, high-shouldered
gravestones were left in the rear of the meeting-house
to their awful solitude once more; and the owl in the
elm took up her melancholy song, and the rustling of the
leaves in the still light made the late traveller quicken his step,
while the watcher by the sick bed drew the curtain, lest
that, looking out by chance, she might see a ghost walking.

Mrs Fairfax and her child had proceeded a dozen yards
or so from the door of the meeting-house, in silence, each
being occupied with her own thoughts, when a smartish,
chirping voice accosted them with, “Good evening, ladies;
a lovely moonlight! Shall I have the pleasure?” and he
offered his arm to Mrs. Fairfax. “O, how good of you,
Doctor Allprice! Do you know I didn't see you? I was
so taken up with my lesson, I suppose; but maybe you
wasn't at the class, at all?”

Then the little doctor replied that he was at the class-meeting,
most certainly, and he added, reproachfully, “Do
you think it possible, Mrs. Fairfax, that I could remain away,
knowing that somebody would be there? If you do, I must
tell you that you do not justly appreciate my feelings.”

He said the word “somebody” with that tone which no
writing can represent, but which no woman can ever by any
possibility mistake.

“O, you naughty man!” exclaimed Mrs. Fairfax, and
then she began to talk gravely of the importance of a more
thoroughly organized system of tract distribution.

“Certainly, Mrs. Fairfax! quite right, Mrs. Fairfax, and
that's undoubtedly true, Mrs. Fairfax,” were all the doctor's
replies, so that the conversation on this head soon ran out,
and the lady found herself obliged to start a new topic.

“By the way, doctor,” she said, after casting about her
for a minute or two, and feeling, doubtless, that she must aim
high, “have you read Brother Seeley's book on the prophecies?”

No, Dr. Allprice had not read the new book, but he very
much wished to; he had seen it and heard it a good deal
talked about.

“Beautifully bound! isn't it?” said Mrs. Fairfax, and
this subject was exhausted. Then, still wishing to keep the
conversation at a high pitch, she asked him if he was an admirer
of Montgomery. She had probably read a hymn or
two of which he was the author.

“Well, no, not that I remember,” the doctor replied. He
then asked whether Mr. Montgomery were not a contributor
to the Ladies' Repository!

Mrs. Fairfax was a little surprised, but womanlike, she
immediately put herself upon his level, and went on talking
of Montgomery as though he were a circuit rider in the next
township. It was little enough she knew of the poet, to be
sure, but she imagined that he was born a good while ago,
and a good way off; she rather thought not in this country,
and she had a faint impression that he was dead. Then she
made a great leap from the sacred to the secular, and inquired
if he were fond of Lord Byron?

“Ah, madam, passionately so,” he replied, and straightway
began to quote some of the more sentimental passages
from the Hours of Idleness. For instance: —

The arm that hung upon his, received a good many little
pressures while this was being enunciated, so that the widow
could not but make a personal application of it; she only
said, however, with a little sigh, “How beautiful you do
repeat poetry!”

“Oh, that depends upon the inspiration,” replied the doctor,
with quite a running fire of little squeezes upon the
clinging arm.

Margaret felt herself one too many, and fell a little behind;
the path was too narrow for three, she said, so that there is
no saying what might have come of it then and there, but
for one of those mischances that temporarily, at least, destroy
the supreme felicity of so many lovers; they met, square in
the road, Mr. Hoopes, the cooper.

“Well,” says he, “here you are now! Why, I've just
been to your house, Mrs. Fairfax, about that 'ere well-bucket
I was a-mendin' up for you. I couldn't rightly tell
whether you was prepared to go to the expense of iron
hoops, or no; though as to that, I wouldn't make much difference,
not to you, and the difference in the waley of the
bucket will be incalculable. I'd adwise the iron by all
means, that is if my adwice is of any awail.”

Certainly, — Mrs. Fairfax was glad to have the cooper's
advice, and she wished to have her well-bucket mended in
the best way, regardless of expense, though, doubtless, this
regal sinking of pecuniary considerations was all owing to
the doctor's presence. She must appear magnanimous, cost
or no cost, and thus it came about that she brought herself
to grief.

“As to the expense,” reiterated the cooper, “the iron
hoop shan't be much adwance upon the pole; not to you,
Miss Fairfax. What I lose, I lose, but that ain't here nor
there; I wouldn't send you a piece o' work wilely done, not
for the whole walue o' the bucket.”

“Humph!” says the doctor, and he set one thumb in the
armhole of his waistcoat, and drew himself up by at least
an inch.

“That's all, I suppose, Mr. Hoopes,” says Mrs. Fairfax,
taking the hint and anxious to get on.

“Well, pretty much. A wery nice evenin' ain't it! Do
you know I said to myself. Miss Fairfax won't be home
such a wery fine evenin' as this, afore I sot out, and yet as
a body will sometimes, you know, I up and wentured.”

“Your business must have been urgent,” interposed the
doctor, “to disregard so strong an impression.”

“Well, mister, it was urgent, and it wasn't urgent — both
to onct!” Then turning to Mrs. Fairfax, he went on, “there
was the hoops with your indecision onto 'em, but I won't
pertend that I didn't go with malice, aforethought. I
wanted a little wisit with you.”

“And so sought to kill two birds with one stone!” interrupted
the doctor, who could not hear such things and hold
his peace.

“Well, yes, wulgarly speaking,” answered the cooper, and
then he says that he is not a mere wotary of fashion, that he
can take clear time for wisitin', and feeling that he had
given the doctor a sharp thrust, he turned to Mrs. Fairfax
again.

“Yes,” he repeated, “I did partly awail myself of an excuse
to wisit you, and though you wasn't there, I sot for
some time onto the edge of the well-curb, and that was an
adwantage to me. Any how, it always chirks me up like,
just for to see the holler walls into which you have lived!”

“O Mr. Hoopes,” says Mrs. Fairfax, laughing, and then
with two or three little nods that were meant to dismiss him
very courteously, and saying, “You must come again, Mr.
Hoopes,” she pulled a very little upon the doctor's arm, as
though she would go; but he set his feet as you may have
seen a jackass do sometimes, and quite pulled the other
way; at the same time, turning and glowering upon the innocent
cooper like a thunder cloud.

“Why, if it ain't Doctor Allprice!” says the young man,
advancing and offering his hand. “Your countenance is so
wariable that I didn't rightly know it was you, afore, and
to speak without warnish, I never saw you when you looked
so kind of ornary. Much sickness in the wicinity?”

The doctor just gave the tips of his fingers to Mr. Hoopes,
and says, “You were too much taken up with another, sir,
to recognize me; but of course you are excusable under the

circumstances.” He spoke very dryly, and still kept his
head high.

Mr. Hoopes laughed foolishly, and said he certainly had
a walid excuse, and then he coughed, and then he wiped his
mouth on a long, thin shaving that he had been all the while
twisting in his hand, and having thus got the better of his
embarrassment, he repeated his question: “You didn't tell
me, doctor,” says he, “about the sickness; is any wiolent
disorders prewailin' now?”

There the doctor was attacked upon his weak side, and
could not resist. There was a good deal of disease, he said,
evincing itself, not so much in malignant forms, as in nervous
debility, confusion of thoughts, giddiness, nervous headaches,
shattered nerves, hypersensitiveness, gout, and dyspepsia.

“Lord!” says the cooper, “that's wariety enough, I
should think.”

But the doctor, thinking to crush the little cooper quite
out, perhaps, went on to say he had one case just now characterized
by sometimes a partial, and sometimes a total
loss of voluntary motion and sensation, caused, no doubt,
by the decreased action of the nerves and capillaries, the
vital energies, in consequence, receiving a defective, nervous
supply.

“Lawsy mercy!” says the cooper, not knowing what
else to say; “a total loss of witality must be dreadful!”

“You misapprehend,” says the doctor; “a total loss of
vitality involves liquefaction, dissolution, death. I spoke of
a deficient nutritive supply; and allow me to inform you,
sir, that every particle of bone, muscle, nerve, vein, artery,
gland and membrane must have a new supply of nutritive
atoms every day, which necessary supply must be conveyed
through the arteries and capillary vessels. You understand
then that when these vessels become diseased and unable to
convey the nutritive supply to any organ, that part of the
human system becomes enfeebled, debilitated, weak, and
consequently unable to perform its required duties; hence
paralysis, and so many other diseases from which no temperament,
age, sex or habit is exempt. Nature is always
provident, however, and with the aid of medical skill based
on scientific principles, is ever ready to recuperate and reestablish
herself; and the proper remedies in the hands of
the clinical practitioner, if he be worthy of his profession,

may always be administered without pain, danger, or inconvenience
to the patient.”

Mr. Hoopes again wiped his mouth on the long, thin
shaving he was still twirling and twisting about — very hard,
this time, as he said: “I hope, doctor, you'll try and keep
Mrs. Fairfax well, if you have got any sure prewentative of
disorder, for you must know that she is a wery waluable
member of society here.”

“I trust I do not require your asseveration upon that
point,” says the doctor very stiffly.

The cooper was offended. “Miss Fairfax wants no
woucher, sir,” he said, “neither in me nor you. She ain't
a mere stranger into these parts without anything to recommend
her except wulgar pertension, as is the case with some;
but I merely wentured the observation, without intending
offence to anybody.”

“And you have'nt given any, neither! has he doctor?”
says Mrs. Fairfax, looking up into his face, and at the same
time offering a hand to the cooper.

“I'll awail myself of your inwitation wery soon,” says he,
“for I would prefer to wisit you when you're alone;” and
with a mere nod to the doctor, and crushing the shaving in
his hand, he strode proudly away, feeling, to use his own
language, that he had come off wictorious.

Perhaps the doctor felt it, too, for he walked in sullen
silence.

The widow hung more and more upon his arm till she
dragged half her weight there, but still he kept bolt upright,
never so much as bending his neck toward her. At last,
she says, with a tender reproach in her voice, “What could
make you so rude to that man, dear doctor?”

“He's an ignoramus and a bore! but you seemed to find
him very entertaining!”

Ignoring the close of the doctor's remark, Mrs. Fairfax
said: “But you, my dear doctor, are neither, and therefore
— ah, well, let it go — only the man meant no harm.”

“I dare say not, in your estimation. How often does he
wisit you, if I may be permitted to know?”

“Wisit me! indeed! Now you're too bad, doctor, to be
making fun of the poor man in that way.”

“I dare be sworn you think it too bad, and I very humbly

beg your pardon; I shall be careful hereafter, (that is, if I
ever see you again,) how I quote the young gentleman!”

Mrs. Fairfax, becoming slightly alarmed, applied an
emollient. She had had occasion, in the way of business,
she said, to meet that man a good many times, and she must
confess he was rather a bore!

She was careful to say that man, every time she spoke of
him, in order to put him a great way from her, and a great
way below her, but it would not do; the doctor's jealousy
was throughly aroused. “In the way of business?” he
said, with all the bitterness of irony possible, and then he
pulled his hat over his eyes, knit his brows, and relapsed
into silence, deep and awful.

“I'm ashamed of you! and all about that man, too! it is
really so ridiculous.”

The widow felt herself treading on thorns, but she spoke
playfully.

The doctor's head was still high, and his brows all of a
black frown, and he protruded uncommonly as he walked.

The throns were getting very sharp, and Mrs. Fairfax was
forced to speak: “I don't see what the man had to keep us
standing an hour for!” she said; the doctor's head still
high, the brows still knit, and no reply but silence.

“Do you? dear Doctor Allprice.”

“Yes, to my sorrow, madam!”

Then the widow laughed, and said she supposed she knew,
too; it was all about the mending of that old well-bucket!
She wished she had never thought of getting it mended, but
she was a great hand to have everything neat and orderly
about her.

“You cannot deceive me in that way, madam! the young
gentleman is a lover; an accepted lover, probably.”

“That man my lover! I have no lover, my dear doctor,
and I never expect to have; I am, indeed, alone in this cold
world.”

“Then it's your own fault, for you must repel the young
gentleman's advances, I am sure.”

“How can you, doctor! if you only knew how unhappy
you make me.”

“Make you unhappy? you, whose heart is all another's!”
And the doctor's high head came down, and the brow lost
its frown and grew suddenly reproachful. Then he said between
a sigh and a mutter: —

“Cruel!” exclaimed the widow, putting her handkerchief
to her eyes, and then she lifted her weight a little from the
doctor's arm, and asked him if she were not growing burdensome.

“Your sylph-like form a burden?” was all his answer.

Margaret, meanwhile, was stumbling along, with tear-blind
eyes, quite forgotten by these old, young people, now
that she was out of sight. She was quite oblivious to their
conversation, musing to herself as to whether Mr. Lightwait
were really very ill, and when he would be able to keep his
promise, and whether, indeed, he would keep it at all; one of
which questions was presently answered, for as they passed
the parsonage, she saw him sitting in the lamp-light by his
study table, and, as far as she was able to judge, looking as
well as ever. This did not add to her peace of mind, which
had previously been anything but peace, more especially
since Katherine Lightwait had made a public proclamation
of her love and despair.

She could not get much comfort even from the thought of
an interview with Samuel, for she thought that in purpose
and intent he had committed murder; she knew that he was
not insane, or that all his madness was his love for her; and
that for his own sake it were better that all things should be
as they were, just now; better an asylum, than a prison.
So, whether she spoke out, or whether she withheld herself,
she was alike wretched.

Had he suffered no scath, had he been rosy and rollicking,
still among the sheep-shearers, it is not unlikely that she
would at this time have steeled her heart against him; but
he was overtaken by misfortune, in disgrace, and his treachery
was truth to her, and what will not a woman forgive for
that?

“My dear child,” says Mrs. Fairfax, when they were come
into the house; “you are so weary and sick you had better
retire at once,” — probably she would have said, “Go to
bed,” but for the doctor's presence, and with a little kiss on
her forehead, designed to excite his envy, she dismissed the

drooping, heavy-hearted girl to such rest as she could get
out of her embittered solitude. Good, single-minded, and
unselfish mother!

By some ways or means, how or what, does not matter,
she had contrived to bring the doctor to a yielding mood,
though his heart was only as yet softened, not subdued, and,
passing over the process, whatever it were, we will take up
the conversation at the point it had reached as they seated
themselves on the sofa at the moon-lighted window of her
parlor.

Would he have a fan? Would he have a glass of wine?
Would he have anything that she could offer him?

Her hand, her lily white hand, that was all he would have.

Of course so slight a favor was not refused him, and leaning
his cheek upon it he repeated in melancholy tones:—

It will be perceived by this that he was still harping on the
cooper.

“So cruel still? and after my assurance too that that man
is nothing to me?”

And with her disengaged hand, the widow played demurely
with his chain, quite unconsciously, and as though it
were her own.

Then he called her a deceitful maid, and said his only
hope was that time might teach him to forget her! It had
been his curse to worship beauty, and to be scorned; ay,
his too susceptible heart was his torment; he had almost
believed that he had found rest for its long wanderings
at last, but the delusion is over, the charm broken and
gone! He was coldly, cruelly dismissed back upon the
world, and told that he was as nothing to the dear keeper
of his soul. Well, there was yet rest, in the grave. He
would pray for inveterate scrofula, erysipelas, salt rheum, or
for some other form of ulcerous or eating disease to give him
happy release from the torture of his unrequited affections!

“Ah, dear one, live for my sake!”

“For your sake? sweet mocker!”

And then he said with one of those singularly absurd contradictions

to which despairing lovers are so prone, that he
would plunge at once into the giddy crowd, and in its vortex
of idle pleasures, force her image, her fair, sylph-like
image, (she was fat and more than forty) from his mind and
thought forever. Yes, that he would! memory would drive
him to madness!

Then he wished he was a wild rover of the forest, hidden
in depths of eternal solitude, or a dweller by the sea, drinking
in the melancholy music of its never-resting waves, and
communing with the fierce spirit of the storm! or that he
were a wild hunter, bounding along some rocky mountain
side, where never more the rosy cheek of beauty might dazzle
with its mocking splendors his too eager eyes. “As it
is,” he sighed:—

And then he said:—

“O how my heart would hate him if he loved thee not!”
Still chafing against the cooper.

He was not proof, however, — what man ever was —
against the feminine arts that were brought to bear upon
him, and by little and little the awful majesty of his mood
gave way, insomuch that his hands began to catch at the
fluttering ends of her ribbons as for dear life; and when he
spoke again it was with a faint glimmering of hope. Sleep,
the friend of the outcast and the weary, would at least be
kind, and in dreams and visions of the night it might be
given him to see some poor resemblance of the charms of
her that was another's! And then he said that even in a
dream to be blessed were so sweet, he could ask for no
more.

“O you naughty man! You bad, provoking doctor!”
and the widow gave him a tender little box on the ear; “as
if you had not already read my inmost heart!” She hung
down her head, and hid her face against his shoulder. “It
must be so, for alas, I am artless and open as any village
girl of them all! You know, you know all too well, — but I
am dying of confusion.”

“Ah, my fair one, I have read your heart too plainly, and
find there but one name! The name — but I cannot speak
it, my tongue refuses it utterance!”

“Of course you find there but one name, and that is” —
She put her hand on his neck, and leaned softly toward him,
whispering low, her face almost against his, and then she
said, “O Prosper, what will you think of me?” and so
dropped all of a heap upon his arm.

“You are only playing with my heart-strings,” says the
doctor. And then he asks her in very tender whispers if
he shall punish the naughty girl with a — a — with a — and
he finished the question without words.

“O you wicked creature! how dare you?” And then
changing the playfulness of her tone to one of sad reproach,
she called him cruel to accuse her of playing with his heart-strings.
“As if I could, with your heart-strings, doctor.”

“Sweet dissembler, you are not to blame; you only obey
a natural impulse; you were created as sportive as the
fawn!”

And then he said his spirit was calmer now, and that he
would forgive her all, provided she would promise never
more to see that hateful cooper!

“But I must!” cries the widow, willing, perhaps, to
provoke a little jealousy, now that the prize was secure; and
suddenly sitting up very straight: “Iron hoops don't come
for nothing, you know, and then the cooper has been so very
good to me all along, he must be paid, and that promptly,
and you must not be jealous, neither, you big bear.”

“Send him to me then, with his account,” says the doctor,
proudly.

She gave a little start. “Mercy! you would have everybody
talking about us; don't you see?”

“Let them talk! but do you shrink after all?”

“From what, pray, dear doctor?”

“My dear girl, one favor, call me Prosper.”

And then he explained that he feared she shrank from having
her name connected with his, and that it weighed upon
his heart like lead.

Then the widow intimated that there might be circumstances;
but that, as she was situated, a lone woman, with
no one to guard her reputation, it were best that she should
pay for the mending of her own well-bucket.

“That is,” she said, “unless — well, in short, unless I
had the right of” —

“Wise, careful angel!” cries the enraptured doctor;
“you shall have the right of” —

Then, having settled his collar, and re-arranged his hair,
he said with the tone of authority, that the lips that made
him beauty's slave, should command him in all things else;
but as for that wretched, insolent boor, the bucket-mender,
he must positively forbid her ever seeing him again!

“Upon what authority, my dear Prosper? As my friend,
or my physician? or my — my — but you will think me so
bold!”

“You bold! you timid dove, that are all made up of modesty.”
And then he said, laughing foolishly, and speaking
in the eye of the widow, instead of her ear, “by the authority
of your — your — your” — here he broke down, and
said he would conclude with another — but she gave him a
little tap on the chin, and told him he must wait till after!

Then he answered that he couldn't wait till after, — not
with her tempting mouth so near him, — and that he must
now!

This was perhaps what she wished to hear, but she nevertheless
made a show of coyness, and told him if it was really
and truly impossible for him to restrain the ardor of his affections
until after — why, why it must be very soon, though
she hardly knew how to bring herself to think of it at all;
she had never meant to, never!

“And you never would, would you? if you had not found
your Prosper?”

“How can you ask it?”

“But you will now? Say you will, once more. O, Margaret,
when shall it be?”

Then he shook hands with her ear instead of the customary
way, and after several vain attempts finally departed.

“Mercy on us! what a dunce he is!” said the widow,
in her heart, and she flounced off to bed. The following day
she sent him a faded daguerrotype of herself, taken when she
was at least a score of years younger, and he returned her
the subjoined lines, written in blue ink, and upon deeply-tinted
and gilt-edged paper: —

TO MY OWN, ON RECEIVING HER PICTURE.

And to this was added: “Forgive, dear girl, my melancholy;
so dazzling a hope must needs beget fear, and love
was ever allied to gloom.”

But perhaps the key-note of his despondency was in the
following line: —

“P. S. Remember, wayward fawn, your promise not to
see him again, until after! Remember, O remember!”

If the reader imagines that I have attempted to represent
Dr. Allprice as a fool, then I have failed of my purpose; he
was in love, simply, that is all, and I here set down for serious
meditation what Benedict says to Claudio: —

“I do much wonder that one man, seeing how much
another man is a fool when he dedicates his behaviors to love,
will, after he has laughed at such shallow follies in others,
become the argument of his own scorn by falling in love;
and such a man is Claudio. I have known when there was
no music with him but the drum and fife; and now he had
rather bear the tabor and the pipe; I have known when he
would have walked ten mile afoot to see a good armor; and
now he will lie ten nights awake, carving the fashion of a
new doublet. He was wont to speak plain and to the purpose,
like an honest man, and a soldier; and now is he
turned orthographer: his words are a very fantastical banquet,
just so many strange dishes. May I be converted and
see with these eyes? I cannot tell; I think not: I will not
be sworn, but love may transform me to an oyster; but I'll
take my oath on it, till he have made an oyster of me, he
shall never make me such a fool.”

Perhaps every man who is out of love thinks pretty much
after this fashion of his friend who is in love, though said
friend, it may be supposed, is always careful to make the

best of it: that is, to cover his insanity as cunningly as possible;
and certain it is, that the language of lovers may not
be written or told; no story-writer has been bold enough to
attempt this, I think, unless with great modifications.

And having said thus much for my own delineament, and
for the sake of the doctor, who I am afraid does not appear
in a very fortunate light, I once more join my broken thread,
and make haste to spin along with my narrative.

Two of our characters, then, are brought to the acme of
human felicity; they are in love, and “engaged.”

And by all the accepted rules, therefore, little more should
be said of them; certainly, nothing more need be said at
present.