though one
bulkhead suffers wreck, the vessel may still come safe to a
matrimonial haven.

Fanny Winthrop is a plain little girl with a round face and the
traditional student spectacles; but a merry pair of dimples twinkling
with a fund of cheery humor, and then--a Winthrop! That will please
his mother, I am sure. But I am no matchmaker. I never think of such
things unless they are forced upon me, as they have been lately.

The other letter on my desk was from Philip Brady. I had missed his
call that last evening in New York. He writes, as if it were a
surprising piece of information, that he is going to marry Nora
Costello, provided she can gain the consent of her superior officers,
and he delegates to me the pleasant duty of breaking the news to his
family circle. "This," he says, "will be easy for you who have known
Nora, and who were the first to discover her charm and the solid merit
which goes so much deeper than charm."

Here is a pretty state of things!

What am I to do? I can see Cousin John's face when he hears the words
"Salvation Army." He has always scoffed and scolded and sworn at the
mere mention of the business, and his opinions are very "sot," as the
Oldbury farmers say. He is, in fact, the only obstinate member of our
family; but I will let him know that he cannot talk down Susan
Standish. I mean to go right over to his house after dinner and have
it out with him. I shall tell him that Nora Costello is a
daughter-in-law to be proud of (as she is), and that I dare say, if he
wishes it, she will leave the Salvation Army (which she never will);
that, at any rate, he must send for the girl to come on to visit him;
that if he does not, _I_ shall; and that I heartily approve the match.

I call myself a truthful woman, and the proof of it is that when I do
start out to tell a lie, it is a good honest one, not a deft little
evasion such as runs trippingly from the tongue of practised
deceivers.

I suppose the news of Philip's engagement will be spread all over town
before night. I feel now as though I should not object to a little of
that indifference to the affairs of one's neighbors which I found so
depressing when I was in New York. Not that I am any less loyal to
Oldburyport; if anything, I have grown more loyal than ever.

I love the deep snow and the trees bare as they are, and the square
down the road a piece, and the post-office, and the trolley cars. Our
cars go fast, but not too fast,--just