adness; but she only evinced concern
and a desire to make up the difficulty. He would discuss her character
and her fitness to make a man happy in matrimony in the style that
young gentlemen use who think their happiness a point of great
consequence in the creation; and Mara, always cool, and firm, and
sensible, would talk with him in the most maternal style possible, and
caution him against trifling with her affections. Then again he would be
lavish in his praise of Sally's beauty, vivacity, and energy, and Mara
would join with the most apparently unaffected delight. Sometimes he
ventured, on the other side, to rally her on some future husband, and
predict the days when all the attentions which she was daily bestowing
on him would be for another; and here, as everywhere else, he found his
little Sphinx perfectly inscrutable. Instinct teaches the grass-bird,
who hides her eggs under long meadow grass, to creep timidly yards from
the nest, and then fly up boldly in the wrong place; and a like instinct
teaches shy girls all kinds of unconscious stratagems when the one
secret of their life is approached. They may be as truthful in all other
things as the strictest Puritan, but here they deceive by an infallible
necessity. And meanwhile, where was Sally Kittridge in all this matter?
Was her heart in the least touched by the black eyes and long lashes?
Who can say? Had she a heart? Well, Sally was a good girl. When one got
sufficiently far down through the foam and froth of the surface to find
what was in the depths of her nature, there was abundance there of good
womanly feeling, generous and strong, if one could but get at it.

She was the best and brightest of daughters to the old Captain, whose
accounts she kept, whose clothes she mended, whose dinner she often
dressed and carried to him, from loving choice; and Mrs. Kittridge
regarded her housewifely accomplishments with pride, though she never
spoke to her otherwise than in words of criticism and rebuke, as in her
view an honest mother should who means to keep a flourishing sprig of a
daughter within limits of a proper humility.

But as for any sentiment or love toward any person of the other sex,
Sally, as yet, had it not. Her numerous admirers were only so many
subjects for the exercise of her dear delight of teasing, and Moses
Pennel, the last and most considerable, differed from the rest only in
the fact that he was a match for her in this redoubtable art and
scie