ple was the
cause of considerable trouble in Bowerton.

Bowerton, like all other places, contained lovers, and some of the young
men were not so blinded by the charms of their own particular lady
friends as to be oblivious to the beauty of Miss Wyett.

She was extremely modest and retiring, but she was also unusually
handsome and graceful, and she had an expression which the young men of
Bowerton could not understand, but which they greatly admired.

It was useless for plain girls to say that they couldn't see anything
remarkable about Miss Wyett; it was equally unavailing for good-looking
girls to caution their gallants against too much of friendly regard even
for a person of whose antecedents they really knew scarcely anything.

Even casting chilling looks at Miss Wyett when they met her failed to
make that unoffending young lady any less attractive to the young men
of Bowerton, and critical analysis of Miss Wyett's style of dressing
only provoked manly comparisons, which were as exasperating as they were
unartistic.

Finally Jack Whiffer, who was of a first family, and was a store-clerk
besides, proposed to Miss Wyett and was declined; then the young ladies
of Bowerton thought that perhaps Helen Wyett had some sense after all.

Then young Baggs, son of a deceased Congressman, wished to make Miss
Wyett mistress of the Baggs mansion and sharer of the Baggs money, but
his offer was rejected.

Upon learning this fact, the maidens of Bowerton pronounced Helen a
noble-spirited girl to refuse to take Baggs away from the dear, abused
woman who had been engaged to him for a long time.

Several other young men had been seen approaching the Wyett cottage in
the full glory of broadcloth and hair-oil, and were noticeably depressed
in spirits for days afterward, and the native ladies of marriageable age
were correspondingly elated when they heard of it.

When at last the one unmarried minister of Bowerton, who had been the
desire of many hearts, manfully admitted that he had proposed and been
rejected, and that Miss Wyett had informed him that she was already
engaged, all the Bowerton girls declared that Helen Wyett was a darling
old thing, and that it was perfectly shameful that she couldn't be let
alone.

After thus proving that their own hearts were in the right place, all
the Bowerton girls asked each other who the lucky man could be.

Of course he couldn't be a Bowerton man, for Miss Wyett was seldom seen
in comp