fellow the father must be," thought Tom,
"to give her such pocket-handkerchiefs!"

I felt like a wren that escapes from the hawk when the rogue laid me
down.

Alas! Poor Julia was the dupe of all this acting. Totally unpracticed
herself, abandoned by the usages of the society in which she had been
educated very much to the artifices of any fortune-hunter, and vexed
with Betts Shoreham, she was in the worst possible frame of mind to
resist such eloquence and love. She had seen Tom at all the balls in
the best houses, found no fault with his exterior and manners, both of
which were fashionable and showy, and now discovered that he had a most
sympathetic heart, over which, unknown to herself, she had obtained a
very unlimited control.

"You do not answer me, Miss Monson," continued Tom peeping out at one
side of me, for I was still at his eyes--"you do not answer me, cruel,
inexorable girl!"

"What WOULD you have me say, Mr. Thurston?"

"Say YES, dearest, loveliest, most perfect being of the whole human
family."

"YES, then; if that will relieve your mind, it is a relief very easily
bestowed."

Now, Tom Thurston was as skilled in a fortune-hunter's wiles as
Napoleon was in military strategy. He saw he had obtained an immense
advantage for the future, and he forbore to press the matter any
further at the moment. The "yes" had been uttered more in pleasantry
than with any other feeling, but, by holding it in reserve, presuming
on it gradually, and using it in a crisis, it might be worth--"let me
see," calculated Tom, as he went whistling down Broadway, "that 'yes'
may be made to yield at least a cool $100,000. There are John, this
girl, and two little ones. Old Monson is worth every dollar of
$700,000--none of your skyrockets, but a known, old fortune, in
substantial houses and lands--let us suppose the old woman outlive him,
and that she gets her full thirds; THAT will leave $466,660. Perhaps
John may get a couple of hundred thousand, and even THEN each of the
girls will have $88,888. If one of the little things should happen to
die, and there's lots of scarlet fever about, why that would fetch it
up at once to a round hundred thousand. I don't think the old woman
would be likely to marry again at her time of life. One mustn't
calculate too confidently on THAT, however, as I would have her myself
for half of SUCH thirds."

{full thirds = Old Monson's widow would under American common law
receive a life interest