He
never read anything, for the simple reason that whenever he was not
at work or at chapel he slumbered. To the utter amazement of
everybody, it was announced one fine day that Miss Leroy and he--
George Butts--were to be married. They were about the last people in
the world, who, it was thought, could be brought together. My mother
was stunned, and never completely recovered. I have seen her, forty
years after George Butts' wedding-day, lift up her hands, and have
heard her call out with emotion, as fresh as if the event were of
yesterday, "What made that girl have George I can NOT think--but
there!" What she meant by the last two words we could not
comprehend. Many of her acquaintances interpreted them to mean that
she knew more than she dared communicate, but I think they were
mistaken. I am quite certain if she had known anything she must have
told it, and, in the next place, the phrase "but there" was not
uncommon amongst women in our town, and was supposed to mark the
consciousness of a prudently restrained ability to give an
explanation of mysterious phenomena in human relationships. For my
own part, I am just as much in the dark as my mother. My father, who
was a shrewd man, was always puzzled, and could not read the riddle.
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