all in vain. An old maid in love is a desperate sight."

"What do you call an old maid?" asked Bro.

"Any unmarried woman over--well, I used to say twenty-five, but Marion
is that, and not much faded yet--say twenty-eight," replied Mrs.
Manning, decisively, having to the full the Southern ideas on the
subject.

"Then Miss Marion has three years more?"

"Yes; but, dear me! there is no one here she will look at. What I am
afraid of is, that, after I am dead and gone, poor Marion, all thin and
peaked (for she does not take after me in flesh), with spectacles on her
nose, and little wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, will be falling in
love with some one who will not care for her at all. I should say a
clergyman," pursued Mrs. Manning meditatively, "only Marion hates
clergymen; a professor, then, or something of the kind. If I only had
money enough to take her away and give her a change! She might see
somebody then who would not wind his legs around his chair."

"Around his chair?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Manning, beginning on another knitting-needle. "Have
you not noticed how all the young men about here twist their feet around
the legs of their chairs, especially when telling a long story or at
table? Sometimes it is one foot, sometimes the other, and sometimes
both, which I acknowledge _is_ awkward. What pleasure they find in it I
can not imagine; _I_ should think it would be dislocating. Young
Harding, now, poor fellow! had almost no fault but that."

"And Miss Marion dislikes it? I hope _I_ do not do it then," said Bro
simply.

"Well, no," replied Mrs. Manning. "You see, your feet are rather long,
Bro."

They were; it would have taken a giant's chair to give them space enough
to twist.

So Bro's life went on: the saw-mill to give him bread and clothes, Mrs.
Manning to listen to, the flowers to water, and, at every other leisure
moment night and day, his inventions. For there were several, all
uncompleted: a valve for a steam-engine, an idea for a self-register,
and, incidentally, a screw. He had most confidence in the valve; when
completed, it would regenerate the steam-engines of the world. The
self-register gave him more trouble; it haunted him, but would not come
quite right. He covered pages of paper with calculations concerning it.
He had spent about twenty thousand hours, all told, over that valve and
register during his eleven years at the saw-mill, and had not once been
tired. He had not yet applied fo