admired me
very much. She welcomed my early attentions. It was only the
ridiculous blunders into which my bashfulness continually drove me
that alienated her regard. If I had not caught my foot in the reins
that time I got out of the buggy in front of her house--if I had not
fallen in the water and had my clothes shrink in drying--nor choked
almost to death--nor got under the counter--nor failed to "speak my
piece"--nor sat down in that mud-puddle--nor committed suicide--nor
run away from home--nor performed any other of the thousand-and-one
absurd feats into which my constitutional embarrassment was
everlastingly urging me, I declare boldly, "Belle might have been
mine." She had encouraged me at first. Now it was too late. She had
"declined," as Tennyson says, "on a lower love than mine"--on Fred
Hencoop's.

The thought was despair. Never did I realized of what the human heart
is capable until Belle came into the store, one lovely spring morning,
looking like a seraph in a new spring bonnet, and blushingly--with a
saucy flash of her dark eyes that made her rising color all the more
divine--inquired for table-damask and 4-4 sheetings.

With an ashen brow and quivering lip, I displayed before her our best
assortment of table-cloths and napkins, pillow-casing and sheeting.
Her mother accompanied her to give her the benefit of her experience;
and kept telling her daughter to choose the best, and what and how
many dozens she had before she was married.

They ran up a big bill at the store that morning, and father came
behind the counter to help, and was mightily pleased; but I felt as if
I were measuring off cloth for my own shroud.

"Come, John, you go do up the sugar for Widow Smith, her boy is
waiting," said my parent, seeing the muddle into which I was getting
things. "I will attend to these ladies--twelve yards of the
pillow-casing, did you say, Mrs. Marigold?"

I moved down to the end of the store and weighed and tied up in brown
paper the "three pounds of white sugar to make cake for the
sewin'-society," which the lad had asked for. A little girl came in
for a pound of bar-soap, and I attended to her wants. Then another
boy, with a basket, came in a hurry for a dozen of eggs. You see, ours
was one of those village-stores that combine all things.

While I waited on these insignificant customers father measured off
great quantities of white goods for the two ladies; and I strained my
ears to hear every word tha