l in such cases, it took another and more bodeful turn. That
inextinguishable laughter of his was heard no more, or at best gave
place to a feeble tittering; his stories dropped from his lips with but
flat pungency; and instead of performing his lady-love's 'chores' with a
mirthful readiness, he went through them in a heartsick way, the while
directing towards her furtive looks of supplication. The true state of
matters was now obvious to all Old Bill was another fatally-stricken
victim of that spooney archer-boy who next to death holds dominion over
men; and with his case, thus momentous, we could but feel a renewed
interest in his behalf, and busy our tongues about him. I, for my part,
thought that as he was a widower, and needful of a wife to comfort him
in his advancing age, and that as the present object of his affections,
if not a highly 'forcible' woman, seemed at all events to be one of whom
no great harm was to be feared, there could be no valid objection to his
being joined to her; particularly if nothing was divulged proving her to
be other than what she seemed. But this view I found to be on the whole
unacceptable to my auditory. Almost to a man they condemned the
propriety of the match. It could not actually be said that they disliked
Mrs. Hose, but they were jealous of her, as, in her manner and style of
array, she considerably dimmed the lustre of their own women; and they
distrusted her as she was a stranger; it being a marked habit with most
of our folks to distrust all strangers save those from whom they expect
pecuniary awards. But meanwhile, notwithstanding this criticism, the
little idyl in our midst was developing itself apace. On the afternoon
of one beautiful Sunday, a day in which we of course ordinarily did no
work, when the dinner-table had been well cleared away, what should we
see but old Bill swinging forth with his sailor gait from the house, and
arrayed as jauntily as his check shirt and pea-jacket (his only suit of
apparel at hand) would permit, to be speedily followed by Mrs. Rose, who
with one set of finger-tips held up the light folds of a sweetly blue
lawn skirt, and with the other bore aslant before her a bewitching pink
parasol. Undoubtedly there was a great indulgence in sly winks and
suppressed titterings on the part of such of us as chanced to be
witnesses of this at once festal and sentimental sally; but the twain
heeded naught whatsoever of these manifestations, but struck off al