alf changed my mind, and I'm terribly afraid this
Maggie Miller, not content with breaking my bones, has made sad work
with another portion of the body, called by physiologists the heart.
I don't know how a man feels when he is in love; but when this Maggie
Miller looks me straight in the face with her sunshiny eyes, while her
little soft white hand pushes back my hair (which, by the way, I slyly
disarrange on purpose), I feel the blood tingle to the ends of my
toes, and still I dare not hint such a thing to her. 'Twould frighten
her off in a moment, and she'll send in her place either an old hag of
a woman called Hagar, or her proud sister Theo, whom I cannot endure.

"By the way, George, this Theo will just suit you, who are fond of
aristocracy. She's proud as Lucifer; thinks because she was born
in England, and sprang from a high family, that there is no one in
America worthy of her ladyship's notice, unless indeed they chance to
have money. You ought to have seen how her eyes lighted up when I told
her you were said to be worth two hundred thousand dollars! She told
me directly to invite you out here, and this, I assure you, was a
good deal for her to do. So don your best attire, not forgetting the
diamond cross, and come for a day or two. Old Safford will attend to
the store. It's what he was made for, and he likes it. But as I am a
Warner, so shall I do my duty and warn you not to meddle with Maggie.
She is my own exclusive property, and altogether too good for a
worldly fellow like you. Theo will suit you better. She's just
aristocratic enough in her nature. I don't see how the two girls come
to be so wholly unlike as they are. Why, I'd sooner take Maggie for
Rose's sister than for Theo's!

"Bless me, I had almost forgotten to ask if you remember that stiff
old English woman with the snuff-colored satin who came to our store
some five years ago, and found so much fault with Yankee goods, as she
called them? If you have forgotten her, you surely remember the
two girls in flats, one of whom seemed so much distressed at her
grandmother's remarks. She, the distressed one, was Maggie; the other
was Theo; and the old lady was Madam Conway, who, luckily for me,
chances at this time to be in England, buying up goods, I presume.
Maggie says that this trip to Worcester, together with a camp-meeting
held in the Hillsdale woods last year, is the extent of her travels,
and one would think so to see her. A perfect child of na