"
So Mrs. Marmaduke exalted her horn and exceedingly magnified her
manoeuvring office. On the strength of it, she treated herself to
profuse felicitations and fished among her neighbors for more.
CHAPTER II.
And now I will let you into a secret, which, according to the received
rules for story-construction, should be barred against you yet a little
longer. I will fling it wide open at once, instead of holding it ajar
and admitting you edgewise, as it were, one conjecture at a time.
Miss Wimple had a lover;--she had had him since six months before her
father died, and the decayed publisher had never guessed of him nor
Sally confessed him; for the good, thoughtful daughter knew it would
but complicate the old man's perplexities and cares to no purpose. To
be sure, his joyful consent was certain; but so long as he lived, "the
thing was not to be thought of," she said, and it was not wise to plant
in his mind a wish with which her duty could not accord. So Sally's
lover was hushed up,--hidden in discretion as in a closet.
Simon Blount was his name, and he was a young farmer of five hundred
acres in first-rate cultivation, with barns, stables, and offices in
complete repair,--a well-stocked, well-watered place, with "all the
modern improvements," and convenient to the Hendrik branch of the New
York and Bunker Hill railroad.
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